


Each a monster

by ElnaK



Series: Eternity for your pleasure [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-03-31 15:16:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 39
Words: 84,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3982882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElnaK/pseuds/ElnaK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alaric and Damon finally knew they loved each other. Alaric was alive. Damon was alive. Great. Everything should be perfect, and happily ever after, though Damon was a bit of a psychotic vampire and Alaric was somewhat cursed as the rest of his family. But. Because there's a but. No fun if there's no but. But Stefan was somewhere off with Klaus, Elena was sad, stuff and shit happened as always in Mystic Falls, and, worst of all, Alaric believed Damon to be dead and ran off to his family, or, more accurately, his family came to pick him up and ask him to "erase" somebody.<br/>What could go wrong, now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. If only

**Author's Note:**

> "Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost!", Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The Scarlet Letter_
> 
> So, back to business. My exams are almost over, I'm done ( not ) studying, and I filled my head with Death Eaters and the Dark Arts, so I'll try not to have Sirius popping in this story, I promise.
> 
> Missed me?

Alaric walked into the main house to find two detectives talking with one of his second cousins.

The house was an old and noble three floors building on the outskirts of Boston. The front door of dark wood opened on a hall with two grandeur staircases leading to the first floor.

It had been so long since Ric had come here, he had almost forgotten how bloody pretentious it was. He was sure Damon would have loved it.

More importantly, Landyn hadn't lied. The police was really becoming aware of them, though they surely weren't expecting... well, that everybody living in this house, save the ones who had married into the Saltzman Family, was or would be a killer at some point.

“Detectives. I didn't think I would have the pleasure to see you today.”

They told her the murder in Wilmington wasn't Mobile Maker's, the autopsie was clear about that, and the young man witnessed on the crime scene had probably nothing to do with the famous serial killer, though he might have been ivolved in this particularly violent murder.

Alaric watched as her aunt was freaking the detectives out being perfectly civil and yet ominously formidable. He would have smirked if he hadn't been back here, in the house he had sworn to never come back to. He would have smirked if he hadn't been part of the said family and hadn't been here because his aunt wanted him to kill a copycat. He would have smirked if Damon hadn't been dead, as was Jenna, as was Isobel. Yes, it might have been funny if he had actually cared.

His cousin, still standing next to the detectives, glanced at the door when Andrea shut it close. His eyes squinted when he noticed who was next to Othaniell and his sister. A look of disbelief ran through his features.

A door opened on the second floor.

Another one of the bloody Saltzmans. Another one of his own people.

How many were living here now? Ten? Twenty? Maybe more, surely more, since Landyn had called for everyone. By now, most of the family was surely home. How many adults, exactly? He couldn't remember very well, after all, some of his younger cousins were surely grown up now. Something like... thirty-eight people, kids aside?

Doors were opening on every floor, and he caught a glare from Cassandre, up there, standing on the second stairs next to her brother.

For a second, Alaric wished someone could be with him. But the important “someone” couldn't, because “someone” was dead. So the hunter wished it away.

Damon wouldn't come back from the dead because he wished so. Not this time.

Ric noticed the place had become silent, and everyone, detectives included, was looking at him. The facial expressions were diverse. Shock. Glee. Scorn. Amongst others.

It didn't matter, really.

“What are you looking at? Some of you forgot I'm part of this goddamn family too, or are you only waiting for bugs to fly into your mouths?”

Whispers were heard, but no one actually dared to say anything.

Alaric was the one Landyn had given the task. Alaric was as dangerous as anyone else here. In fact, Alaric was more than that, because he was Alaric, and Alaric was one of the best, or worst, eitherway, Saltzmans living. He was propably stronger than most of his relatives.

And they knew it, as they had known that he hadn't lost his edge, or at least had regained it since then, with only one glance.

It didn't matter that they didn't like his choices. He was here, the strongest, and the place was silent.

“Alaric, come here, we need to talk. Meet detectives... Dawson and Granger, right? I'm sorry I couldn't help you more... with everything the police does to keep us safe.”

The detectives left as soon as they could, a bit bewildered.

Ric sighed, and went along as Landyn asked him and a few other to come into her office, just opposite to the front door, between the two staircases.

He sat down in a comfy armchair and waited.

The room was darker than he remembered. Maybe his aunt had had the curtains changed.

Janice, who was his father's cousin, and her brother Archibald took the seats on his right, while Theodoric and Archibald's son Galfrid sat on his left. Landyn, already sitting in her own armchair behind a rather impressive desk, stayed silent and looked at the five Saltzmans in front of her.

The hunter wasn't impressed. It was an usual way to behave for the main house.

Creepily.

After a short while, during which no one had dared to speak, or, maybe, cared to speak, Landyn locked her gaze on Theodoric.

“Someone made a mistake.”

Everybody reacted the same way and allowed themselves to glare at Theo.

Ric was simply curious, if a bit disguted with the wording. A mistake, really? He had made a mistake when he had married Isobel. Theodoric was a freaking hitman. That wasn't a mistake.

He turned his head a little to look at his cousin.

Theodoric was a splendid young man, twenty-seven years old, dark hair, same length as his sister's, but brown eyes. He was also as conceited as a man could be, and didn't seem the least ashamed with the criticism. Sure, there was a problem, but it certainly wasn't his fault, was it?

Since when had he lost an eye? Alaric wondered when he realized the long hair hidding half of the young man's face wasn't a fashion trend, and that the piece of black cloth was actually an eye patch.

Not that he cared. Theo had surely deserved it.

How many people had he murdered for money in nine years? Dozens? Hundreds?

The hunter tried not to grumble at the thought. He couldn't do anything about it without revealing to the world that the Saltzmans were a bunch of programmed killers. And even though it was the truth, some of them, himself included he hoped, were actually decent guys who didn't deserve to be killed as a threat or used as experiments in order to discover if a killing gene was available for the army or whatever.

Well, he could still kill Theodoric.

But that would be a bit troublesome, with the family and the authorities and well, the young man was still his cousin. A shame, really. But family, and all. Don't go off murdering your family, it never ends well. Stefan could give evidence, actually, with the whole ripper thing.

Alaric got the thought of the youngest Salvatore out of his head before the oldest tagged along.

“I understand you want my help with this... mistake?”

“Indeed, Alaric. And despite our best efforts, we were unable to track down the copycat. We'll get him eventually, but I'd like it to end as soon as possible. I don't like having officials coming in and out as they wish for an investigation that someone from this family caused.”

So she recognised Ric was supposedly the best suited for the job.

The hunter glanced at Theodoric, stiff as a board and apparently a bit annoyed with their aunt for blaming him. As if he had nothing to do with that.

“Do you have the crime scenes' photographs and the police reports for each murder?”

Landyn handed him a file. Alaric began going through it, still asking questions here and there.

“This one is little Theo's, this one too, but not this one, right?”

The police detectives on the case had believed it was the same culprit and called for the FBI, but the copycat who used the serial killer Mobile Maker as a cover had made a mistake the police couldn't possibly notice, not before some more years of investigation.

The thing was that Mobile Maker wasn't a serial killer. He was one of the aliases Theodoric used to disguise his assassinations. A hitman, and seven serial killers, each known across the world. Only the employer knew that the murder wasn't the work of a serial killer but of the man he had hired. And Mobile Maker, Black Player, Lady Chance and the four others were all Theodoric, yet no one had ever thought of a possible connection between their killings.

And with that in mind, Alaric could very simply distinguish the copycat and his cousin.

For eight of the lastest murders, the motives didn't add up with a hitman, even if it usually was correct from the police point of view. Besides, Mobile Maker's killing rate had gone way above the reasonable during the last year. Theodoric would never have used the same alias so frequently.

“He did a good job with the dismemberment, I must say. It really looks like your work.”

Which wasn't exactly a compliment for neither of the killers, the original or the copycat.

What kind of barbarian dismembered his victim before drilling the bones and stringing up the body parts in a dark alley?

Some psychotic copycat, apparently, and a very conscientious hitman willing to hide his felony behind the acts of said barbarian. Who was the more disturbing killer, Alaric didn't know. You had to be mad crazy to do such a thing, and enjoy it. The copycat was disturbing, yes. But thinking that Theodoric got no satisfaction or pleasure, being a Saltzman, doing it and yet went to the trouble of blood everywhere and body parts and desecrating even more the body, was as disturbing.

And thinking that he would have to do the same with the freaking copycat's corpse once he'd have found out where the bastard intended to strike next was really disturbing too.

Not that he cared. His name was Alaric Saltzman. Death wasn't an issue for him.

A face, ice-blue eyes, long lashes, raven black hair came to his mind.

Correction. Death wasn't an issue as long as it wasn't the death of someone he cared for.

“Anything else?”

“He uses a three deaths pattern, when Theodoric doesn't. No need for additional victims if there is no money to make. Two were already announced in Philadelphia, so you should hurry. He's likely to act again next week.”

Alaric looked at Janice. It had been years since he hadn't seen her. He couldn't really say he had missed her hoarse voice and her pragmatic idea of contract killing.

The hunter sighed, closed the file and headed out. Landyn was apparently done with the session, so he could just leave, kill a shitty serial killer hiding behind the name of a fake serial killer, come back, take a random chamber, and sleep his misfortune in love till the end of his life.

A second before he pushed the door, Theodoric talked.

Ric gnashed his teeth. So much smugness from his hitman of a cousin was definitely insufferable. One of those days, they'd have a match and Theo would have his ass handed to him.

“You couldn't even find the guy who killed your wife, and you'd want me to believe you can find this copycat? My copycat?”

The young man was obviously pissed for not being the one to greet the usurper, but that was no reason to provoke Alaric into breaking his nose with a punch. He had done it before, he could do it again. Theodoric was good, no doubt, he was even great at fighting if compared with the human level fighters, but amongst the family, he wasn't the strongest. Only one of the worst ones.

Ric sneered, but didn't turn around, still looking at the door panel in front of him.

Who had been killing freaking vampires during the last months? Who had always been better than the kid, even taking into account the four years age gap between them?

And hell, Isobel and Damon weren't the kid's business.

“I found him.”

“You did?”

Theo sounded taken aback, and Alaric was pretty sure Archibald and Janice had begun to whisper.

“He's dead.”

“You killed him?”

If only. If only he had killed Damon that first time, or if he had left Mystic Falls as soon as Isobel had turned up and made herself clear about their shitty wedding.

He surely wouldn't be in this state now. Not caring about anything, not even about being given the task to dismember a fake real serial killer by his aunt, or about the fact that he wasn't affected.

“He hadn't actually killed her, so I didn't. Instead, I fell in love with him. And then he died.”

Roc wasn't going to let them say anything. He went out of the office, slammed the door, made his way to the front door as the entrance was crowded with unhealthily curious family members and left.

He had a killer to kill.

And a phone call to make to Elena. He couldn't ignore what he had overheard from the detectives as they had left the house earlier. The suspect they talked about seemed to look a lot like Stefan.

_“Ric, are you alright?”_

“No. But you need to know I just heard of a crime scene, most likely Stefan's. I'll send you the location in an email.”

_“Wait, Alaric, about Damon, he...”_

Alaric hung up.


	2. His own head was filled with one man only

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Restless Damon is restless.

Damon was brushing his teeth when he heard Elena, who was more of less babysitting him, say a name that made his heart beat faster. He dropped the toothbrush and blurred to the living room.

“Alaric called?!”

The teenager silently nodded, still glaring at her cellphone as if it was responsible for everything.

“He didn't even let me say one word and hung up. But he said he had heard about Ste...”

Elena stopped talking as she looked up. She stared at Damon for a long time as he started repining and pacing all around the place.. He had foamy toothpaste dropping out of the right corner of his mouth, that sometimes made bubbles when he spoke, but he didn't seem to care at all.

Or maybe he wasn't aware of it.

It made sense, after all, that vampires would brush their teeth as anyone else. Going around with dried blood between their teeth would have been highly suspicious.

But still. Damon Salvatore was fidgeting in his living room with foam dripping slowly from his chin to the floor.

Maybe this was a dream.

“Damon?”

The vampire stopped dead in his tracks and looked at her. A white bubble of toothpaste blew up with a dicreet pop. He wiped it but still looked like he had more important stuff to deal with, important enough for him not to notice how ridiculous he was.

Elena was going to ask what it was about when he made his mind.

“I'm going after him. I'll be back... someday.”

“What? No!”

Damon frowned and evaded her attempt to seize his arm.

“I'm going. Besides, Jenna made him your legal guardian but he left before anyone could warn him and he has no idea about it. I'm going, I'll find him, and I'll take him back.”

For everyone. Not only for himself, but for the kids, for Elena, for Jeremy, too.

For everyone. Not only for the kids, for Elena, for Jeremy, but for himself, too.

Elena sighed, and tried another approach.

“I'm worried about you, Damon. You are the first vampire in history to survive a werewolf's bite, and it took you hours to be healthy again. I'm not sure one single day will be enough for you to recover, and what if there are side effects? We're definitely not trusting Klaus' word that all you need is his blood.”

The vampire rolled his eyes and walked to the door.

“And if he lied or even just didn't know what he wasn't talking about and I have side effects, what will you do? Worry all over me? Seriously, Elena, you can't do much about it because you're only a human, I can't do much about it because if that happen I will be the one unable to do anything, Bonnie can't do much about it because as powerful as she is she has little knowledge, so I might as well go and search for Ric. If promise I'll phone you if I start dying again.”

And without saying anything else, he raced to his car.

He had lived the last hours in fits, his mind going from one extrem to the other. He had hated Alaric for leaving, he had decided he wouldn't care anymore, then he had cried himself dry in his bed, insulted Ric though the man was not present, for that exact reason too, that he wasn't present, he had loved Alaric enough to know he had to find a way to get him back if he didn't want to go ballistic once again.

For a time he had been compliant with Elena's wish to keep him under observation. To be frank, being falsely unable to act had been a relief, it had given him an excuse not to go after Ric right away and instead dwell in his own misery.

But shit.

Damon realized he could ask Andie for help before leaving. She could certainly find one or two thing about the Saltzmans' current position in society through her acquaintances as a journalist. Sure, Andie wasn't a top five journalist, but she knew some people who were, and it couldn't hurt to know a bit more than what Gal had told him.

Galswinthe had been a great source of informations, of course. She had kept in touch with her family for centuries, but she had some issues understanding the latest economic and political landscape. And she couldn't come too close to the Saltzmans without it being obvious that something was wrong with her. So yes, she knew everyone in the family, some of them better than others, but that was all.

And she had confessed she had to stay in Mystic Falls in case her loony husband decided to take a trip here, searching for Klaus. Damon hadn't said anything about said husband being alive, as he had stayed silent about said husband being barmy. He had guessed said husband was dead, but if he was nuts, the story was still working fine.

Maybe he should be a bit more concerned about a crazy seven hundreds years old vampire coming to town, but for now, his mind was clouded with Alaric's absence.

And the Badass Team would do a better job dealing with the nutter if it was actually a team.

So, he had to find the hunter, that was it.

Or, well, he could simply admit he missed Ric, he wanted Ric, he needed Ric.

No one was spying on his thoughts, after all. No need to act though guy even in his own head.

So, determined to talk to Andie, even if she might have to work this day, Damon headed to her place. He'd wait here till the night if he had to.

Luckily, after twelve minutes of pleasant pacing and fidgeting, the young journalist came home. Surprised to found her distressed friend, well, distressed, she raised an eyebrow and let him in.

Damon felt strangely happy when she did.

She knew she didn't have to.

She knew what it meant to invite in a vampire.

Yet she had.

“Can you tell me anything about a family living mostly in Boston, the Saltzmans?”

Andie blinked, unsure of what to make of the situation.

“I can ask a friend who lives there, but... isn't that Alaric's family?”

She asked no more question when she saw Damon's reaction.

What she managed to find out was interesting, to say the least.

The Saltzman Family was... incredibly rich and important and unsuspected considering its secret history. Even knowing about them was incredible, as they were amazingly discreet for such a powerful and frightening family.

“What are you going to do?”

Andie seemed really concerned. She hadn't seen her friend so restless since a long time.

Actually, since their talk in his bedroom, when she had understood what the vampire felt for his best friend.

Damon looked away for a while, then finally got the cat out of the bag.

“I... confessed.”

Andie was pleased, but she knew there was more to it. If not, then why was Damon looking so lost?

“And?”

“He accepted me.”

Well, that was one way to say it. Very... cautious. Something had gone wrong, obviously, but the journalist couldn't guess what. After all, if the two men had come to terms with their feelings for each other, why weren't they busy, together, somewhere, doing stuff that had her blushing only thinking about it?

Because yeah, Damon was so not the kind of guy who would let his new found lover get away without doing the actual thing during their first date once.

Or twice.

Or the whole night.

Damon looked embarassed. Which wasn't usual for him.

He almost blurted out the rest of the story under her stubborn gaze.

“And I kind of almost died and he thought I was dead and he left and he won't take my calls and I have to find him and I love him so much I can't even think straight right now no pun intended.”

Andie was going to tell him to calm down, that it was alright, but the vampire became paler.

“A call. Right. He called Elena. So his new number should be in her phone.”

Damon was pretty much in the middle of the street, rushing to his car, when he thought better and searched for the mirror in which Rose was trapped.

He wasn't exactly sure why he believed Andie could be in danger anytime soon, but it couldn't hurt to give it to her. With some luck, the spell on the compact mirror hadn't been a one-time-thing, and it would still work if the journalist was in any mortal danger. Andie lived in Mystic Falls, and knew about the supernatural side of the world. There were so many reasons for her to get involved in some vampires or witches' business, and Damon wouldn't be here to protect her if anything happened.

It'd be for the best if he gave her the mirror.

And frankly, the vampire wouldn't have been able to bear the presence of another person in his car while going after Ric, even if the person was trapped in a mirror and couldn't talk to him or anything.

So he went back, gave it to Andie, compelled her to have it all the time with her, and rushed to his car once again, before heading to the boarding house where he hoped to find Elena.

Truthfully, he hoped he wouldn't see Elena, who was too eager to have him grounded. But he hoped to snatch away her cellphone without her noticing. Which shouldn't be so difficult.

Unless she was glued to her phone, talking to whoever she was sharing her anxiety about Damon, with the whole argument about how-she-had-no-idea-what-had-gotten-into-him-but-she-feared-he-might-do-something-harsh-and-what-do-you-mean-Damon-is-a-murderous-ass-anyway-?.

The vampire mused about the identity of her interlocuter. He was too far away to pick up anything more than an irritated mumbling. Surely Bonnie or Caroline.

Eitherway, not his business.

The vampire didn't mean to sound awful, but he had his own problems to deal with. He knew Elena had been having a terrible life lately, and who could blame her for being devastated and searching for solace after all the people who had died? but his own head was filled with one man only.

After one long hour and a half of the girls' chatting, Damon was ready to jump from the roof to put an end to his torment. He remembered nearly too late that it wasn't going to happen, and throwing himself from the roof would only result in great pain and Elena coming and deciding he was to be restrained before he tried another attempt to his life and well-being.

When she finally let go of her cellphone, and the world knew how long he had wished for that moment, Damon came in carefully. Elena had left her phone on the couch and was somewhere else, luckily. The vampire listened to her pacing, first floor apparently, and took a look at the incoming calls.

Damon searched and searched and searched for the right hour, but all he could fine was...

Hell! Why had Alaric decided to withhold his new phone number?

The vampire winced.

Because the hunter wanted nothing to do with Mystic Falls anymore.

Hopefully, he'd still want them to be happy together, once he'd know Damon wasn't dead-dead yet.

Oh please let it be that way.

The vampire heard footsteps coming this way and run out as fast as he could, so pretty fast, before Elena could get a glimpse of his presence in the house.

He wasn't sure being tied down to a bed with daily vervain infusions to keep him under control until no one had any doubt that he wouldn't go rabid and off half the city because of some weird side effects left was the best way to get his boyfriend back.

More like, he was certain it wasn't the way to have Alaric back at all.

And he needed Alaric, that he knew for sure.

And Alaric needed him, that being a fair assumption from him but backed up with what Gal had said about Falkenbachs and Saltzmans and coping with grief.

Damon got in his blue Camaro, still not certain whether he was anxious or delighted.

He'd have Alaric Saltzman, everybody could be assured of that.

He'd do anything for the two of them being together.


	3. Slightly sorry smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damon, you're so cute... erm, sexy, I meant.

The blue Camaro stopped on the side of the road, in front of a suburban house with light brown walls and neatly trimmed lawn. The street was silent, a bit too much, even, but it wasn't all that surprising. It was early in the morning, so most children were surely sleeping, and adults didn't make so much noise in these neighborhoods.

Damon smirked as he got out of his car. Everything here screamed of blatant normality and boring lives. He'd never have guessed a man with abnormal abilities in killing would live in such a place.

For a second, he wondered if he hadn't got the address wrong.

But no, the name on the mailbox was really Saltzman.

Edward and Diane Saltzman.

The vampire went for the front door, but when he saw the doorbell button, he froze.

Was he really going to meet Alaric's parents? Like, right now? Alaric's parents? The two very people in the whole world who could say something about his yet non-existent relationship with Ric and who were pretty likely not to approve of them if they knew what he really was?

Damon forced himself to stop fidgetting and reached for the doorbell.

The doomed sound of his own judgment day gave him the chills. It was like he couldn't hear anything else in the world than what was going on in Alaric's childhood home at that exact time.

Nothing, really, nothing else mattered.

A woman, probably Ric's mother, said something, and the vampire heard footsteps coming.

The door opened, and Damon stiffened.

The woman was definitely charming, if not downright beautiful. In her early fifties, she seemed really nice, and Ric's hair were definitely hers. Her large brown eyes were dotted with what looked like orange sparkles, and a lot of sweetness. Her smile widened when her gaze met his, though Damon had no idea why.

“Are you looking for someone who lives around here, young man?”

The vampire didn't answer, too mesmerized with the sound of her voice, feminine, soft, peaceful, yet a lot like the hunter's, calming, confident, protective. When he heard that voice, so close and yet so different from Alaric's, his heart missed a beat. Every single one of his certitudes collapsed. Not that he had so many certitudes, but... He had been so sure he could hold on until he'd find Ric.

Now... he couldn't even speak properly.

“Erm... I'm... for Ric. He said he... home.”

Diane Saltzman frowned, but she didn't seem bothered by his uncalled for stuttering.

“Alaric is coming home? Funny, that, no one told me anything. I guess he's not here yet.”

“Then, maybe I should come back later. Thank you, Mrs Sal...”

“Oh, no, come in, come in. You came all the way here to see my son, and he's not even here to greet you. I shall at least offer you something to drink. And please, call me Diane.”

Damon hesitated, but decided to do so.

It hadn't been his intention to be invited in, but since he had been, he couldn't change anything about that. He figured it would be a bit rude to bluntly reject the invitation when Ric' mother was being so nice and he had already disturbed her morning, so...

And it wasn't as if he would ever dare to think to drain Alaric Saltzman's mother, so coming in wasn't dangerous for anyone.

Damon tried to imagine what the hunter would do to him if he ended up killing his mother. The ideas that came to his mind were definitely not made for him to try. What reasons would he have to do that, anyway?

“What do you want to drink? Or...”

Diane looked at him. The poor young lad seemed really tired. Had he been driving all night?

“Maybe I could get you something to eat. After what, you'd get some sleep in the guest room. You seem exhausted.”

Damon wasn't going to say it was due to a werewolf bite, but yes, he wasn't feeling as well as he should have. Maybe Elena was right, maybe it hadn't ended yet.

But he was right too. Even if there were side effects, none of them could do anything about it, so he might as well search for Ric. The only thing was that he hoped he wasn't going to get rabid once more and try to murder Alaric's parents.

It wouldn't be the best first meeting ever if he did, and the hunter would surely hunt him down up till the end of his life. Or the end of Damon's life, for the two of them were tremendously dangerous, if not in the same way.

“A glass of water, then. But I might take your offer to sleep a moment.”

“A glass of water it is. My husband will surely return before noon, maybe he will be able to tell us something about Alaric. Most of the Saltzmans have been called by the head of the family, in fact.”

“The head of the family?”

So the Saltzmans were this kind of powerful family.

Yes, it made sense, with what Ric had told him.

Diane came back with a glass of water, and gave it to him before answering.

“I guess Ric hasn't said anything about his father's family?”

Damon shrugged, swallowing his drink cautiously.

Everything about this place was making him more aware of himself, as if he was seeing a part of Ric that he wasn't supposed to see. Not yet, at least. The pictures on the walls, the silence in the house, Diane's slightly sorry smile, it all had a hint of Alaric, though he hadn't lived here for years.

“He talked little about them, but he actually said one or two things to me.”

As he said that, he realized how big a new it was.

Alaric had actually talked about his little family problem with someone else. He hadn't even told Isobel. And even if Diane couldn't know what he had told him exactly, even if she had no idea that the hunter had given away his true nature to Damon, it was obvious she would figure out Alaric had been strangely honest with him.

The vampire finished his drink, and stood up.

“I might need a few hours of sleep, actually. Your offer still stands?”

He tried to ignore the calculating look that had invaded the woman's features as she walked him upstairs. He really ought to be a bit more careful with his words.

“It's Alaric's old room. The window in the guest room has been broken with a rock, surely some teenagers, yesterday, and we're waiting for someone to fix it. Sorry for that.”

Damon gulped as soon as Diane was back in the kitchen, downstairs, where she couldn't see him.

Had she decided to let him sleep in Ric's room on purpose? Was the window in the other room really broken? Diane had no reason to test him that way, but still, Damon was freaked out. Maybe she had her suspicions. Maybe she knew there was something between her son and the stranger that hadn't been told. Maybe she...

As if.

The vampire was definitely growing paranoid, if he seriously thought that someone as kind as Diane Saltzman would deceive him and lead him into some kind of trap because she might have a doubt about him. And, really, what kind of trap could you come up with in a bedroom?

Damon eyed the grey lampshade hanging from the ceiling, upon the bed, as if it was going to fall on him during his sleep.

Then he sat, alone, on the bed.

Alaric's bedroom.

The room had been cleared of almost any personal belongings when Alaric had moved out of town, but there were three boxes left on the shelf next to the window, and a few books as well.

Damon wouldn't remember how it happened, but what he knew, was that he woke up nearly two hours later, snuggled into the sheets that weren't even Ric's, since the hunter had left the house years before.

He hastily got on his feet and made up the bed, a bit embarassed, hoping Diane hadn't come to see how he was doing while he was asleep.

And then he didn't knew what to do anymore. Even if it seemed the right thing to do, he wouldn't go down and look for Ric's mother, too ashamed to face her. He wasn't going to sit back on the bed, only staring at it was already this awkward. So he stayed still, standing in the middle of the room.

After two or three minutes, however, his eyes wandered through the furnitures, and he found himself glaring at a cardboard box that wasn't correctly closed. Why was he glaring, he didn't know, but he felt like this was important. Maybe he had developed a sixth sense concerning any Alaricish issue. Which was, obviously, the dumbest thing he had ever thought of.

It took him exactly twenty-two seconds to decide that he absolutely needed to see what was in the box. With some luck, it would be pictures of Ric as a child. Or even notes about some school classes written by Alaric, he didn't really care as long as it was something related to the hunter.

Here he was, acting like a stalker once again.

Maybe he was one, he thought as he listened to Diane's humming on the ground floor. No danger this way, he could stalk Alaric's shadow around without feeling guilty or fearing that his mother would walk in and see... Damon acting like a stalker of some sort.

So, no danger for now.

The vampire opened the box.

He was a bit desappointed to see it was full of letters, none of them with Ric's handwritting. Which was pretty logical, after all, the one who sends a letter is not likely to be the one who receives it.

Damon had to give in and acknowledge it: love was making him stupid.

He took a letter at random and read it.

It wasn't quite what he had expected.

Not that he had expected anything in particular.

But still.

_We know you did it._

_Killer._

_Why would you be hiding at your house if it wasn't you, Saltzman?_

_You sick killer._

_Don't ever come to school again._

Damon stopped reading after the tenth one.

He guessed it was from the time after the killing at the bank.

Anger rose in his heart, a sharp feeling, similar to hatred and yet more visceral, something almost feral, actually, as he thought of everything Ric had had to go through. The vampire clenched his fists, the letter in his left hand rustled as he crushed it, and his knuckles went white.

He had this sudden urge to find out whoever had written these letters and tear them apart, one after another. They'd see what a real monster was.

Damon took a deep breath.

He couldn't do that.

The vampire was putting the letters back in order when he saw one that had never been opened. Curious, and at the same time afraid of what he would read in it, he decided it was worth it. At least, if it succeeded in making him angrier than ever, he would forget about his falling asleep and snuggling the bed sheets.

A sad smile took over his face. Why had Alaric never opened this letter?

It would make anyone feel better, and yet it was so simple. Earnest, too.

_We understand that you won't tell us your name, but thank you. Thank you very much, for saving our child from that monster. Whatever people will say about you killing him, you know there are at least three persons in this world that will never wish that you never did it. If you hadn't, our only child would be dead. We can only thank you this much._

The front door opened, and Damon heard the voice of a man coming in. He put the box back on the shelf, but kept the letter. Alaric needed to see this.

Diane called for him, so he rushed, but at human speed, downstairs.

The man was definitely Ric's father. Tall enough, ash blond hair, bleu eyes, past fifty years old but in great health, totally able to fight against anyone who'd go after him, and they had the same jaw.

The vampire banished the thought that they also had the same neck from his mind.

“Edward Saltzman. I believe you're here for my son?”

There was something alarming in his gaze, as if he knew something that wouldn't make any of them happy.

 


	4. You are dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Damon had us waiting for a long time before becoming aware of his feelings, confessing and confessing again, now it's Ric being utterly convinced Damon's dead and running away as fast as he can, and how long will I go on delaying the inevitable?

“Dear, did something happen? You don't look well.”

Ed Saltzman took a seat and tried to make sense of what had happened the day before. He had tried to do so for hours, he had barely slept, and he still couldn't.

“Ric came back, and Landyn gave him something to do. And, you know, our son being our son, I thought he would at least say no and leave slamming the door. But he said yes, and when our eyes met, it was as if he couldn't see me. Everything seemed so... off, I had to ask my sister what it was about. Hell, Diane, Landyn asked him to ki...”

At that exact moment, Edward remembered the stranger in his house, sitting awkwardly where his wife had told him to, and listening to everything that was said.

The man looked up and observed carefully the young man with raven hair and ice-blue eyes.

Edward Saltzman wasn't a fool. On top of that, he was a Saltzman.

If other people might have overlooked it, Ed couldn't simply forget to notice how the young man had reacted to his sister's name. He couldn't not see how this stranger's body was that of a fighter, of a soldier, even. Just the right amount of muscles, not like those certainly strong bodybuilders who were most of the time very slow and unable to control their raw power. A stance that was that of a man discreetly vigilant, yet self-confident.

And at the same time, this stranger seemed to be bothered with something.

“What is your name, again?”

The stranger looked at him with wide eyes.

Damon hadn't even noticed he had never introduced himself.

“I'm sorry, I think I didn't... I can't believe it. Well, I'm Damon Salvatore. I... know your son from his last job, in Mystic Falls.”

The vampire was certain that Ric's father had understood it was only a half-truth, but Edward didn't seem to mind too much about it, so he thought it would do for the time being. But if he wanted to hear more about Alaric, maybe he'd better make it clear that he knew about... some particular circumstances. He really had to hear about where the hunter had been sent to, after all.

“Look, I don't want to sound suspicious, but I know about your family... history. You're not the only ones in this world to suffer from special issues, and I too am a bit... peculiar. Alaric has met a lot of different people, recently, and he has become aware of his own situation being an actual curse. But then, the woman he loved died, and after that I nearly died, and us being best friends, he took it to heart and left thinking everyone was better off this way. I really... want him to know I'm still alive, and that the kids he had grown fond of are all right too. Besides, Jenna asked for him to be their guardian, but he still doesn't know, so... Here I am.”

Damon had said all that in a rush, not sure of it being the right way to do it, but he had to say it, and he definitely feared to say something wrong and being thrown out of the house for whatever the reason. They surely had many reasons to throw him out.

Ed et Diane exchanged a perplexed look, obviously wary of him now.

“If I sum it up right, you're our son's best friend, his girlfriend died, he ran away, but he's supposed to be the legal guardian of her children now and that's why you're here? And you know that every Saltzman who lived has at some point of their life killed someone? And you yourself are some kind of cursed man too?”

Damon nodded, well aware of the absurdity of the situation, and handed them a picture of Alaric with Jenna and the kids. He felt a twinge when he saw how happy Ric looked on this.

“The only thing is that Elena and Jeremy aren't Jenna's children, but her niece and nephew, because their own parents died in a car accident. Also, Elena is actually Alaric's ex-wife, Isobel's, daughter, so he's kind of her stepfather anyway.”

Diane seemed to think all this mess was highly amusing, and restrained a small laugh. The line on her husband's forehead had become more accentuated than ever.

Ed took a moment to think.

The only question he asked was not what anybody in the room would have fathomed.

“I'll ask only this: he's not the one who killed his girlfriend, is he?”

Damon stayed dumbfounded, mouth wide open, for at least ten seconds, trying to imagine a scenario in which Ric killed Jenna, and the scene was becoming more and more absurd as time passed.

Finally, his mouth went back to a normal, shut state.

“Alaric would never have killed Jenna, he loved her way too much!”

Edward cocked his head to the left, thinking about something Landyn had told him after Ric's departure. This young man, with his good looks and his strangeness that the Saltzman father could sense directly in his guts, looked genuinely outraged with the idea of Alaric being responsible of his lover's death.

It told him two things.

First, his son was innocent. It was a relief. Ed knew very well what their shared nature as Saltzmans could lead them to do. Of course, besides his family inheritance, Ric was a good-tempered man, he wasn't likely to kill his girlfriend over an argument or jealousy. But still. The facility to kill was not to be overlooked. Seeing his son in his current state of mind, the day before, had been enough to have him wondering if Alaric hadn't done something he could never forgive himself for.

Edward knew what it was like, to be able to kill even someone you loved and never really feel guilty about it. He had never made this mistake, but he had seen its effects. After murdering her own husband, his aunt had never been the same, torn apart with the loss of a murdured family member and knowing that if she hadn't been a Saltzman, it would never have happened.

Alaric had had this look on his face, too, that he didn't believe in anything anymore, when Isobel had gone missing, years before. And he had it too, last time Ed had seen his son.

Second, Landyn had told him that not only the woman Alaric loved, but also a man he had recently found out he loved as well, had died in a two days period. The questions being, did the man concerned knew he was loved, and how likely was it that the man concerned was now sitting in front of Ric's father?

That Damon fellow sure seemed to care for Alaric.

“When our son left the main house, he said something about the man who killed his wife.”

Damon stiffened in his chair, staring stubbornly at a fold in the tablecloth.

Diane frowned at the reaction, unsure of what was going on in her house. But she trusted her husband, and if Edward hadn't yet brought out the big guns, quite literally in fact, it couldn't mean what she thought it meant, could it?

Ed drew the tablecloth flat, asking for the young stranger to look him in the eyes.

“That Isobel had never been murdered, and that he had fallen in love with the said man just before he died.”

Well, more or less. Landyn had added some informations that Alaric had scarcely given away during the trip back to Boston. Such as going to a cemetery where Isobel had apparently burned to death not long before, something to do with suicide but not exactly...

Damon fidgeted on his chair, suddenly willing to be somewhere else.

To be frank, the vampire wished to be somewhere else since a great deal of time, but now, it was even worse. He felt as if cold water was running down his spine as Diane was looking at him utterly shocked. And he couldn't, no matter how much he wished to, look away from his shared gaze with Edward Saltzman.

And of course, he knew he had his guilty-of-everything-you-said-and-even-more face on, but this time, he lacked his usual smugness to assist him.

“Well, Isobel came to Mystic Falls twice over the last year, so I guess she wasn't murdered, or rather, I haven't killed her that night, since I'm pretty sure you figured out I was the said alsmost-dead guy. But she still killed herself less than two weeks ago, so Ric is actually single and I have no idea why I'm telling you this, maybe I should leave now.”

But his body wasn't responding to his mental orders.

Stuck in a chair while his boyfriend's parents were studying him.

Damon had never felt this awkward in his whole life.

Ed sighed.

The world was really going too quickly for him. If only his boy could have stayed a boy a bit longer. But, well, even the not-adult Alaric had had issues. After all, he had been only fifteen when his first kill had happened.

Edward searched for his cellphone and a piece of paper Landyn had given him so that he'd stop pestering her.

“It's Ric new phone number. I guess that if someone can get him back to his normal self, it's you.”

Damon's eyes lighted up in a billion stars light, and both Ed and Diane had to admit that their son was a hotties trap.

He was messy as hell when he tried to dial the number, but he surprinsingly managed to do it in the end.

The ringing lasted a while, but eventually the hunter picked up his phone.

_“Who is it?”_

A lump in his throat almost prevented the vampire from speaking.

“Ric?”

A long silence.

_“Damon?”_

“Yes.”

_“You are dead. Now go away. Leave me alone. I can't bear listening to hallucinations of you all day, you know.”_

When he hung up, Damon was boiling with conflicted feelings. At first, it all went out through his mouth without discipline and not much meaning. The overall idea was something like this:

“He thinks I'm not real. He thinks I'm a hallucination. Alaric thinks I'm a hallucination. Why does he? Because I'm dead, of course, I can't be real. Alaric thinks I'm dead.”

Then something snapped inside of the vampire's mind.

“You know what? Fuck. I'm going to beat him half to death and then I'll feel better. Hell, no one gets to ignore me and makes others believe they're having hallucinations. And meanwhile, I'll phone him every hour just so that he doesn't get to sleep until I get there.”

Damon looked with determination at Edward and Diane Saltzman.

“I assume you know where he is now?”

Ric's father had a little smile creeping up his mouth, looking particularly amused with the whole situation.

“We're having a copycat situation, Landyn sent him after the fake Mobile Maker. So he should be on his way to Philadelphia.”

“Thank you very much. I hope I'll see you again.”

“Hopefully, with our son by your side?”

“Exactly.”

The vampire saw the two of them smiling softly as he left, a bit hot-headed perhaps but more determined to catch up with Ric and take him back to live with him, by force if necessary, than ever.

Damon only took a break in order to gas up the car, and make the promised call of the hour to annoy Ric.

Somewhere between Boston and Philadelphia, the hunter, lying stiffly on the mothel's bed, didn't even try to reach for his cellphone.

Eyes wide open, but not really seeing, he wasn't sleeping.

Figures were sitting on the edge of the bed, silhouettes were standing in the shadows.

He could recognize each one of them.

The first man he had killed.

The vampires and werewolves he had slain.

And, worst of all, the people he hadn't managed to save.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, staring accusatively at Alaric, were Isobel, Jenna and Damon.

He couldn't really see their faces, but he knew they were them.

He knew it was them, and he knew they weren't here at the same time. He knew it was only a trick his mind played on him, because he couldn't bear to be who he was anymore.

And yet he couldn't be anything else than this sorry excuse of a human being.

 


	5. Blankness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted to write something slightly depressing, but you know me, it means almost everything I write and also none of it. Let's only sum it up this way: Alaric will complete his task soon, but hallucinations of Damon are following him around...

Philadelphia.

Alaric absentmindedly thought he had been there before, not for long, only passing through, surely.

Well, it was another big city, with skyscrapers and everything. He may have enjoyed the city, if the circumstances of his being here had been different. But he was here to find a freaking serial killer, who used his cousin's modus operandi as a hitman, and to kill said serial killer the way both of them killed people. He was so not in the mood to be pleased with the view.

If he had been someone else, Alaric would have run away as fast as he could at the simple mention of a serial killer, let alone the part about his family issues and the fact that they had asked him to casually dismember a human being. Truth to be told, if he had been himself, though he wouldn't have run away, he certainly wouldn't have accepted the job.

But lately, the hunter hadn't been himself.

Why? was a very interesting question.

Perhaps the fact that every single person he loved always ended up dead in dreadful events was a good enough hint.

Once had been hard enough to deal with.

But in the past week, he had had to live it again, not only a second time, but a third one at that.

Deal with it.

Seriously.

Ric snorted, still sitting in his car, reluctant to get out and go to his motel room.

In fact, he didn't want to do anything. His greatest dream, right now, right here, was to fall asleep and never wake up again. Dying could do, too, but sleeping was something peaceful. And Alaric wasn't sure death would be peaceful.

He had, not long ago, learned that for some people, death wasn't the end.

He wasn't supposed to be one of them, after all, he wasn't a magical being. But he was still a cursed man. So who knew what would happen when he'd die? Would he simply disappear? Or would he be trapped, same as a vampire, a triggered werewolf or a witch, in the unnamed purgatory of the supernatural? No one could tell, as long as he was alive, and he wasn't willing to risk an eternity of ghostly existence for the sake of knowing. And what did he really knew about this shitty purgatory? Not much, really. Only that he didn't even knew if it concerned untriggered werewolves as well, which were the closest beings to his own situation he could think of. And, after all, humans might have had the same afterlife bullshit, only not in the same place.

Alaric really didn't wish for an eternity of brooding.

The only thing he wanted was to die and let it go. Or maybe not. Not being in the first place could have been great too. But now it was too late for that, right? Like, thirty-one years too late.

Whatever, he couldn't.

Not if he didn't know for sure what was awaiting him on the other side of the door of the deceased.

So instead of cutting his own throat open with the dagger he kept in the glove compartment, because he was growing freaking paranoid all over again, Ric got out of his car and walked to his motel room. There, he locked the door, turned on the light, and drew the curtains.

He was pretty sure the bed was begging him to lie down and sleep and forget everything for the night, but he didn't have the time.

Still, he'd have loved to lie down and sleep and most of all to forget about everything.

As if he could.

Alaric glanced to the edge of the bed.

As expected, he was here.

The others had gone away at some point, they had disappeared, vanished into thin air. Even Isobel and Jenna had left, smiling fondly as they looked at him for the last time. They had been pretty nice for hallucinations, once he had gotten used to them. Isobel had been as she had always been before she had left him. The only difference was that she had asked him to look after Elena, if he felt like it. Jenna, well, Jenna's hallucination, had been kind, and asked him to go back for the kids, but only if he felt like he could.

For now, he wasn't sure. Maybe he'd go back to Mystic Falls, but not right now. He needed rest. Blankness, even.

But him, he hadn't left.

The vampire's shadow was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

Damon's hallucination had been sitting there for five days, now. He wasn't saying anything, only staring at him angrily, as if it could change something.

For a while, Alaric had wondered why this hallucination wouldn't wear off as the others had. But well, he was hallucinating, so even if theremost likely was an explanation in his subconscious, he wasn't anywhere near close to find it.

The hunter sat next to the figure of Damon.

No matter how he looked at it, the eyes, blue, ice-blue eyes, were eyes of resentment. The hallucination had always stared at him, with a painful look in his eyes. As if Alaric had let him behind when he shouldn't have. As if the real Damon was waiting for him somewhere, alone.

But Ric knew. He knew Damon was dead.

How could he not be?

Alaric reached out hesitatingly to the figure of a vampire he had once known.

His fingers didn't pass through the hallucination, but even when his arm was outstretched, the figure was still as far away from his hand as before.

The hunter didn't sigh.

He couldn't see the point to.

So he searched for a piece of paper and a pen. In the anonimity of the motel room, he thought about the task that had been given to him.

Mobile Maker's copycat was a clever man, but he had gotten a pattern, to kill thrice in the same city before moving, sometimes to another state, sometimes to another continent. He was either rich enough to travel, or working for an airline or something like that. Maybe he had chosen the pattern to play cat and mouse with the police, the FBI and any other law enforcement agency he'd find in his way.

Since they didn't know exactly what they were looking for, and were surely disturbed with the serial killer's sudden change of habits, he had gotten away with it for now.

But Ric knew what he was looking for, and he also knew which murders were Mobile Maker's and which weren't. He was abnormally good with murders, murdering and murderers. It had taken him four days only to figure out who he was going to kill and dismember this night.

Well, if that wasn't a happy thought.

He still had to check one or two things, but it was nothing he couldn't verify with a simple talk with his favorite suspect.

And if he was wrong, he'd only have to try again. The informations he had gathered, looking from far away at the two first crime scenes of the cycle, tailing the man, everything had being duly noted and verified, so if there was an error, it was due to a flaw in his reasoning.

The answer was somewhere there, on this sheet of paper he used to put on paper once again the hints and proofs. It was most likely to be the name he had circled in red, but if it wasn't, then it was something else, on this piece of paper.

Alaric closed his eyes, trying to remember the face of the man. Immediately, grey eyes and a wry smile showed up in his mind. No need for much effort, eh?

The killer wasn't special or anything. He looked quite plain. That was actually an advantage in the field of murdering, because he wasn't striking in any way.

That'd make Alaric wonder, how were the Saltzmans, even the ugly ones, even the beautiful and handsome ones, always able to disappear into the background as easily as any plain man, but well. Ric was a Saltzman. He knew how to do it instinctively, and had had years of training, always willing to be anyone, but not a Saltzman.

He didn't question his abilities.

Nor did he question his instincts.

They were what they were. Ruthless killers, the Great Assassins.

The man had hidden it well, when they were talking, sooner in the afternoon, about how the coffee in this place was great and all. But he had hidden too much, it was obvious to anyone in the field, and would have certainly seemed suspicious to a detective.

You couln't see who he really was in his eyes.

And while it concealed what should never be seen in the eyes of any man, the glint of hatred, the glow of madness, the gleam of cruelty, it also concealed everything else, and left to see only the falsity on a blank front.

Many men masked their feelings. This was old news if there ever was.

But when you knew what it was like to be empty in the inside, or at least not complete, as only a Saltzman could know, the facade was nothing. Some killers were able to tell their own kind. Everyone in Alaric's family could do as much.

The hunter would check anyway. He wasn't feeling like dismembering and displaying a corpse only to find out later that he'd have to do it again. As much as he didn't mind the killing, it didn't mean he liked to do it. And cleaning the blood afterwards was always an hassle.

And, well, even if he didn't have real feelings about that, even if he didn't feel it was wrong to kill innocent people, he still knew it was wrong, in a logical-,-cold-,-but-still-better-than-nothing-, way. And there was also the fact that he didn't feel good about depriving a family of a family member. That he felt wrong about stealing the future of a man.

He lacked a part of his soul, not a whole soul.

Damon's hallucination was there, glaring at him from afar, to remind him of that incomplete soul.

He struck a match and watched the piece of paper, with his notes on it, as it became ashes.

Ric set the alarm, then turned off the light.

He needed to sleep, not because he was tired, not because he had an appointment with a serial killer at eleven in the evening, not because he was going to kill someone in less than five hours.

He needed to sleep, because he was disgusted with life, and yet couldn't choose to die without risking to end up stuck as a ghost for all eternity.

Slumber was a good medicine to get rid of thoughts.

Silence.

Dreams, perhaps.

Nightmares, certainly.

But nothing he would remember once awake.

Alaric wasn't the kind of man who remembered his dreams.

No, the hunter was the sort of man who could only rest by sleeping, even if being asleep might have been worst than being awake.

Who knew, after all, what were his dreams made of?

What were the dream of a man, who could kill on instinct, and never feel anything about it?

No one knew. He himself didn't know. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was for the worst.

But he'd have wished he could be put to sleep forever, it that meant he wouldn't have to worry anymore.

Alaric closed his eyes.

He was unnaturally stiff on the bed, not even under the sheets, but he couldn't bring himself to unwind. Not after everything that had happened, the deaths, the betrayals, the sacrifices.

He couldn't bring himself to unwind, even as he drifted into sleep.

Ric didn't see the figure of Damon vanishing next to him, since it happened at the exact moment his eyes were shut with tiredness.

The vampire's shadow, as the hunter called it sometimes, had no reason to exist anymore.

After all, it was nothing more than an image of Alaric's mind.

It didn't really exist.

Hours later, not long before Ric would be awakened by the ringtone of his alarm, the sound of a car stopping was heard outside of the motel.

It wasn't unusual per se, it was a motel, after all.

What was unusual was the stricking likeness between the hallucination that had disappeared from the hunter's mind as he had fallen asleep, and the man who got out of the blue Camaro. He had the same raven hair, the same incredible eyes, the same handsomeness.

 


	6. Hindrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually had a hard time writing this one.  
> But well, it was an eventful chapter.

Damon got out of the car and walked to the reception. He knew for sure that Alaric was in this motel, he only didn't know where in the motel. So he'd have to ask.

As if he hadn't wasted enough time as it was.

Four days.

For four days, Alaric had simply left every place he had been to minutes before the vampire had come in. If he hadn't known it wasn't on purpose that the man was doing this... well, he'd have thought it was on purpose.

Frankly, Damon had to admit, Ric was freaking good at disappearing. The whole Falkenbach inheritance was genuine, surely. Alaric hadn't even tried to be discreet. Yet he was. No wonder they were the best killers out there, with such innate skills. Luckily for him, the hunter had only wanted to go unnoticed, and not to be a freaking human ghost, while doing his work.

The vampire wondered. Would he have been able to keep trailing the man if Alaric had been determined to simply disappear? He wasn't sure.

The receptionist was half asleep on her desk when he walked in. Damon patiently waited for almost three seconds, then got bored and banged on the desk. The woman looked at him, startled and angry, but kept her comments to herself when she saw his perfect face.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

Damon used his most charming smile to get close, and it worked wonderfully. The receptionist was almost fluttering her eyelashes into his, and he wondered how she was restraining herself from simply stealing a kiss right now right here.

She couldn't have made it easier for him to compel her.

“A friend of mine is staying in this motel. His name is Alaric Saltzman, but I'm positive he uses an alias. Blue eyes, light brown hair. What is his room number?”

She gave him the room number, and he didn't bother to make her forget their encounter.

And no luck, Damon saw Alaric as he stepped out. But the hunter was already leaving in his car. This was becoming a bad, very unpleasant habit, the vampire thought.

Could he really be this unlucky?

The vampire gruntled before blurring to his car. Being a vampire allowed him to go fast, sure, but not for too long. Really, he had no chance to win a race against a car, if Ric decided to go somewhere far away.

He felt restless as he was driving, restless as he parked, restless as he lost sight of Alaric Saltzman for almost two minutes before noticing him walking with an unknown man to a dark alley.

What?

An unknown man. A dark alley. Alaric.

What?!

Reminding himself that the hunter was hunting, quite literally, a serial killer, and not searching for a substitute to a certain not-so-deceased vampire, Damon calmed down and followed them.

It could only be the said serial killer, couldn't it? Ric was definitely not the kind of man who would sleep around so soon after his lover's death. And if he had been, Damon was pretty certain the unknown person would have been female, not male. Unless the man looked like him. No one looked half as wonderful as Damon Salvatore. And from what he had seen, the man wasn't a look-alike. At all.

Putting his jealousy and possessiveness aside for now, the vampire listened attentively to the conversation that had begun not far away. The place was deserted, only two men glaring at each other and a vampire hiding behing a public trash can. Well, it was mostly the unknown man glaring, while Alaric looked like he could behead the idiot without thinking twice about it, and while reading a recipe book.

“Why are you following me, exactly?!”

Damon repressed the urge to go at the man's throat for yelling at Ric, the urge to step in and jump the hunter without caring about the idiot, and the urge to off the unknown man to be alone with Alaric. He felt that his boyfriend needed to finish his task by himself, and he didn't want to be a hindrance even before making Alaric understand he was goddamn alive.

Alaric's voice was frightening. Blank. Yet terrifying.

And yet so loved. Damon was in love with this voice. The few days he hadn't heard it had been hard. And now, he could hear it again. Even if it was the inhumane version of it. It was still Alaric Saltzman's voice, this voice that could get him to calm down no matter the situation.

“You did bring this upon yourself, doing what you are doing under the name of someone else.”

There was a silence. The unknown man was glaring warily at Alaric, who seemed dead serious but also not cautious enough. Damon knew it wasn't the case. And soon, the other one knew too, as the vampire bumped in the trash can trying to see better.

The unknown man jolted in his direction, while the hunter only looked at the dark figure in the alley. He didn't seem tense or anything. But it was the same as usual. A Saltzman was always ready for anything. Always being on his guard didn't help to go unnoticed.

Alaric, as any other Saltzman, was used to be tense, to the point where he wasn't anymore.

“Who are you?”

Damon took a long breath and came to them.

He saw Ric's face twitching.

That was all the recognition he got.

Alaric looked back at the serial killer he was supposed to erase.

He didn't have time to deal with hallucinations for now.

“As I said before, this is nothing you don't deserve.”

The unknown man couldn't see it coming. A blade was pressed against his jugular, his back was pressed against a wall of red bricks, his life was pressed against death, and he had seen nothing.

His eyes flew to the man near the trash can, imploring for his help, but the stranger with raven hair wasn't doing anything. Maybe he knew the one who was threatening him, maybe he was working with him. Maybe that was the reason why the other one hadn't reacted to his presence.

His eyes encountered those of his agressor.

Fear crawled under his skin.

Never before had he seen such eyes.

Eyes with nothing in them. Not the slightest feeling, let alone hesitation.

“I don't know what you think I did, man, but you can't honestly be hoping to kill me here and get away with it. Maybe we could talk about it, drinking a coffee or something.”

His agressor snorted at that, a horrid smile distorting his handsome face, while a glint of amusement lighted his eyes. The unknow man wondered if it was perhaps the devil in disguise. One couldn't possibly look so great and at the same time be able to kill so naturally.

Because he had no doubt about it.

The man was dangerous.

Worst than him himself, able to do way more than the casual murders he allowed himself to enjoy, and yet unshaken with his own actions.

As if the man didn't really care about the killing. As if killing was in itself no more than breathing.

The unknown man got rid of these thoughts. It wasn't the time to be in awe, not if he wished to live. And he wished to live and to continue slaughtering innocents while hiding behind the name of a renowned serial killer who had been in the field for so long that him and his ridiculous twenty years of age would be a joke of a suspect to the police.

So he had to get rid of this man who seeemed to know more than he should have. But for that, he had to switch their positions, to be able to threaten the man and eventually kill him.

Of course, he couldn't know who was Alaric. And he wouldn't know that despite his looks, the young men who was staring at them with a confused face would rip his throat open before anything happened to the man he loved.

Damon was thinking. He remembered Ric's reaction to his phone call, and guessed that it was highly probable that the hunter thought him to be a hallucination. He figured out it would be better for everyone if he let Alaric deal with the serial killer before trying to jump him in an alley. Well, except for the serial killer, but who cared about the bastard?

So he had to behave for now.

And maybe he could get to see Ric in his killer-mode, and given the victim was a freaking serial killer, he could totally have no remorse about enjoying the murder and the sexiness of his soon-to-be lover soaked in blood.

The hunter's voice was heard one last time.

“You've upset someone who should never be upset. And you have endangered one of the worst families to threaten. You should never have chosen to hide your killings behind the name of this specific serial killer, for Theodoric Saltzman isn't a serial killer. He's a hitman with very particular ways of hiding his work. And even though he's a horrible man, he's still part of the family. Protecting him is protecting us. And you, you put him in danger with your thoughtless killings. Your existence is a threat upon a family of murderers. You should be able to guess what's coming next.”

Realization slowly made its way to the unknown man's mind.

Whoever the hell was this man, whatever the fuck was this family, he had gotten himself in a freaking mess that he wasn't going to escape anytime soon.

It was his last thought.

The last things he saw were the eyes of the man who was killing him.

They held no pity, nor excitement, but only blankness. They weren't the eyes of a man, nor the eyes of a devil, but the eyes of death itself. They weren't judging, nor enjoying, but simply witnessing.

Blood escaped his body as a blade sliced his throat.

He didn't notice it was done the exact way he had been putting his own victims out of their misery, the same way he had carefully researched after hearing of the Mobile Maker and thinking he could use this killer to hide his own flaws. He couldn't notice, after all.

He was dead.

The body fell to the ground, and Damon thought it was time to intervene.

The sight of Alaric doing whatever he had been doing with blood and threats and a frighteningly hot behavior had him mentally panting already, though everything was a bit blurry to his mind since their eyes had met.

There was no way he'd wait anymore.

Ric frowned as he thought about how he was supposed to get rid of the body. He wasn't eager to dismember anybody this night. He hadn't been eager to do anything for days, to be honest.

He missed Damon, Jenna and Isobel so badly, that killing had been a relief, somehow. He didn't need to think when murdering. Analyzing his surroundings, yes. Thinking, not so much. Not for someone like that serial killer, only able to kill, but not to fight. Instinct was the word.

Damon.

Alaric glanced at the figure that, for once, had followed him out of the motel room.

No need to say that he was a bit more than surprised when the hallucination grabbed him and kissed him angrily.

Their lips met, got away from each other, only to be pulled into an even deeper kiss.

Their eyes were closed, this time.

None of them seemed to believe they were really there, together, once again.

Damon's hands roamed under the hunter's shirt, his body came always closer to Ric's, and soon the man began to embrace him as well, his hands wondering around the small of his back, and finally deciding to go and search for the hard curves of the vampire's ass.

Damon groaned, hard already, and opened his eyes when Alaric broke their kiss.

The hunter looked astonished.

“I guess that means you're not a hallucination, this time? But really, how did you survive that bite?”

“Not the time for that, sweetheart. I searched for you for days, but you were always fleeing the scene right before I arrived, and I want some compensation.”

Alaric smiled sheepishly, but soon enough his face became serious.

The vampire followed his gaze, and he saw the still form of the nameless serial killer. Shit.

“As much as your ass is calling to me right now, I believe I have some cleaning to do. You could help, though. It'd be our first date.”

The offer was tempting, Damon couldn't say otherwise.

 


	7. For the first time, together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I least I tried.

Damon looked proudly at their work. A real piece of art.

Well, not really.

Even for him, it was disgusting, though kind of funny. Disgusting was his human point of view, funny the vampire one. How the hell did Ric's cousin come up with this abomination of a modus operandi, even being a Falkenbach?

Alaric searched through his bag for clothes. They couldn't decently go back to their cars looking like that. “That” being, soaked in blood from head to toe.

After all, there were body parts hanging across the alley, and the hunter hadn't planned to give away that he and his fanged boyfriend might have something to do, you know, with the murder.

Alaric rolled his eyes when Damon tried to talk him out of getting changed.

“Don't you dare change clothes. You're way too hot right now, soaked in blood, for me to even let you take a shower.”

“Then put on a cloak at least. I don't want to end up in jail.”

“I can get us out with compulsion so fast we wouldn't even get to see what a cell looks like.”

“What I want to see right now is a bed. Not a police station.”

The vampire crept to his back. He had this falsely outraged look on his face, that he habitually used to get in someone's pants. And Ric had this idea that it was exactly his goal.

“You'd go to sleep instead of playing with me after all I did for you?”

Somehow the vampire's arms ended up embracing Ric, and the hunter frowned as he noticed Damon's hands going down his stomach to his fly.

Really, what was Damon thinking? They were in a dark alley in a big city, though not downtown, with several parts of a body artistically displayed not far away, covered in blood, and the vampire whined about his sexual needs?

“I don't remember saying I wanted to sleep in a bed. What I remember saying is that I want to see a bed. Sleeping is certainly not the only thing you can do using a bed.”

Damon stopped undoing Ric's fly, thinking about that statement. After a while, he decided the wait was worth it, and let go of his loved one.

“Fine. But you're not letting me on the doorstep. I want to see this bed with you.”

“It's a motel, anyway, Damon. You don't need me to invite you in.”

The vampire shrugged and took the coat Alaric was handing him. As hot as fucking in a dark alley could sound, he wasn't going to anger the hunter when he was so close to making him his official lover. And he had to admit that Ric had a point about their culpability.

They left the alley and went to their cars. Before parting for the route, Damon heard his boyfriend mumbling something about how he hoped that the one who would find what was left of the serial killer in the morning wouldn't be a kid. The vampire's heart almost melt at how caring Alaric could be, when he was such a cold-blooded killer.

Blessed be the curse that had allowed him to get such a lovable human.

They miraculously managed to get back to the motel without meeting anyone.

The first thing Alaric did when he entered his room was to go to the bathroom and look at himself in the mirror. He was a total mess, hair falling out of place, blood stains all over the face, and clothes spotted with dark red smears. Sighing, he threw his cloak and shirt in the bathtube and went back in the bedroom.

Damon too had gotten rid of his coat, and was sitting on the bed, waiting for him.

“You can't know how relieved I am to know you're not dead.”

The vampire made a face.

“You can't know how relieved I am not to be dead.”

Alaric chuckled and sat down next to him.

“Since I... left, I've been seeing you each time I went and tried to get some rest. You would look at me with a bitter expression, and not say a word. At least, the others were talking.”

The vampire frowned at the mention of other hallucinations. Who the hell had dared to be as important as himself to Ric's subconscious?

The hunter caught on his jealousy and smiled gently.

“You don't have to worry. Most of them were my victims. The others... well, Isobel, kind-Isobel I mean, not bitch-Isobel, and Jenna.”

Of course. Alaric would never cease to love the two women. But he would not love them the way he loved Damon, the vampire realized. Ric was the kind of man who was able to differentiate the ones he had loved and the one he loved.

“I was afraid I'd never get to see you again, you know. You're too damn good at disappearing for your own good, Ric.”

The hunter didn't answer the remonstrance. He could clearly hear the concern behind the light tone. No, what he did was way more sweet than a dull answer.

Damon almost jumped in surprise when Ric rested his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes.

“I love you, you know.”

The vampire's heart shrunk at the word. Then he breathed heavily.

He felt free.

Damon said nothing, but gently took Alaric's head between his hands. The vampire turned to look the man in the eyes, ignoring the blood they were both covered in.

“Love you too.”

None of them knew who went for it first, but soon they were kissing madly without listening to the squeakings of the mastress. Alaric's hands were trying to get Damon out of his shirt and the hunter wasn't even aware of their actions. The vampire, straddling his boyfriend's hips without shame, felt something hardening against his ass and smirked.

Then he remembered something and slightly paled.

“Erm, Ric?”

The hunter looked at him with lust filled eyes.

“What?”

“I've never done it with a guy.”

Alaric sneered. For once, Damon Salvatore was confronted with something sexual he knew nothing about. Not that Ric knew anything about it either, but well. It was still sastifying.

And that way, they would be doing it for the first time, together.

“Neither have I. It only means we'll have to train a lot.”

Damon arched an eyebrow, amused. This was going to be fun.

“I like the sound of this. Better get to work, then.”

As he said this, he found himself back against the bed, Ric on top of him, looking dangerously alluring in a wild fashion. The man leaned to kiss him hungrily. His lips went down the vampire's throat, pursued to his left nipple, and Damon felt his own cock hardening by the minute.

Moaning with pleasure and haste, the vampire watched his lover's face while arching in need. Ric looked very pleased with himself, and soon the hunter took notice of the bulging in Damon's pants.

The sparkle in his eyes was no good news for the very needing vampire.

Ric went back to kissing him on the mouth, his fingers playing with his lover's nipples, his crotch dangerously pressed against the vampire's. Damon closed his eyes. They were both so turned on their cocks were rubbing against each other through the fabric of their pants, but Alaric wouldn't do anything to release them from the growing pain. Instead, he kissed the vampire so roughly he bit his lover's lower lip.

Damon shivered as a drop of blood colored their lips a darker red. The wound was already healing, and the vampire broke their kiss. He opened his eyes and saw that Ric was studying his face with a devilish grin on his own.

Understood. Sex with Alaric Saltzman was dangerous. Lucky him for being a vampire.

“You weren't staring at me all along, were you?”

The hunter's smile grew wider and this time, Damon gulped. He wasn't going to survive this much teasing if he didn't take part in it too, like, right now.

“I rarely kiss eyes closed.”

The vampire gave the hunter a look.

“Freak.”

“As if you didn't like it.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Alaric smiled fondly. This vampire would be the end of him, if he could get him in such a state. He had to admit, not repressing his strength while having sex was... different. He hadn't meant to hurt Damon before. The kiss had just... gotten out of hand. Yet again, the vampire surely had no issue with a little biting, hadn't he? Having issues with biting would be quite hypocritical.

“Well, what do we do now?”

Of course, he knew the answer. But having Damon take the lead could only be interesting, and he didn't want to regret anything later on. He wasn't going to monopolize and after that find out he hadn't satisfied his lover by being to busy with his own benefit.

The vampire grinned.

Not long after that, Ric felt something coming between their pressed hips and playing with his zipper. A hand teased his prick, and the man lifted his body off Damon's a bit.

“I know of a place who'd like to meet our friend.”

Alaric refrained himself from laughing at that. At least now he knew how the vampire wanted it.

Compliant, he backed off and watched Damon getting completely undressed.

The sole view of the perfect body, of the white skin, sent a jolt to his groin. Waiting was becoming harder, but he didn't want to please himself instead of Damon because he was being impatient. It'd have been selfish. And a less lot satisfying, he suspected.

Once naked, the vampire turned his attention back to the history teacher waiting for him with a hard cock whose size was bewildering. Maybe he'd better get Ric out of his pants before trying anything else, for he wasn't feeling like teasing anymore with this mere sight.

No sooner said than done, and Damon found himself eyeing the promising prick with hunger as he helped the man to get naked. Never before he'd have thought another man's sex could look so wonderful and sound of so many promises. Obviously, he had been wrong. Even the pre-cum that had had Alaric blusing so hard when the vampire had savagely ripped off his underpants had looked delicious.

But Damon had behaved. For now, his ass was more demanding than his mouth.

Ric cleared his throat to get his attention, in a less lust-induced state, perhaps.

“Sorry but I... don't have, you know, erm... lube.”

Damon stared at him for a second then smirked.

His hand went to his own cock, and he began to please himself while observing the hunter's reaction through his lashes. Soon his hand was covered with white and slippery cum, and Alaric was redder than ever.

“I believe this will do.”

Not willing to waste anymore time, the vampire pressed himself against his lover, wrapped his fingers around Ric's prick and led it to his entrance. He had to force it inside of him at first, using his cum to help, but soon enough he could remove his hand and fully enjoy the feeling of Alaric's cock twitching in his ass.

Damon groaned as Ric began to move inside of him.

Trying not to rush it, the hunter searched for spots that'd make his lover feel just right, and after a while, the vampire was panting and perfectly happy with his sex life. The prospect of getting better with time, as they were doing it for the first time, was thrilling. If they could do this much now, how good could sex get with experience?

“You're so tight, Damon...”

“Well, sorry I'm not a girl. We can stop right now, if you'd rather have me as a chick.”

“Never said it wasn't a good thing.”

Alaric thrust into him with passion and the vampire mused that maybe he was being honest.

He hesitated a moment, shivered with one more move, and finally decided. It wasn't the first time, after all. Gently, carefully, he bit into the man's neck, but took little blood. It was for the pleasure, not for the need.

Alaric shuddered, but soon unwound and smiled at the vampire.

 


	8. You're incorrigible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to disappoint those who thought something terrible was bound to happen, but it's mostly bantering this time.

Damon woke up early, but spent at least three minutes staring at the blue sheets under his nose. He hadn't been aware he had blue sheets for his bed. And why the hell was he sleeping with his face buried in the sheets? Even if he didn't need to breath, he had this habit about sleeping, that couldn't do well with having his nose buried into the sheets. And...

And there was definitely someone sleeping next to him. He knew the feeling of naked skin against naked skin, thank you very much.

What he didn't know, was the shape of the person's back. Either he had shagged a giant bodybuilding woman last night, or it actually wasn't a woman.

Damon gruntled. He had had to be terribly drunk to sleep with anyone when he was searching for Alaric. He moved a little, but stopped when the person next to him shrugged.

Just a minute, let him think about it...

He wasn't the kind of vampire who would screw around with a female bodybuilder, nor with a man whose name wasn't Alaric. Yet, there was a masculine and naked person in the bed with him. And Damon was naked too. And he certainly wasn't in his bedroom. And now that he thought about it, he had this disturbing impression that since he had moved there was something cold and wet spilling on his legs and coming from his...

The vampire sat up straigth in a jolt.

There was cum coming out of his ass. There was a man in his bed. The bed wasn't his bed.

Alaric's mumbling voice greeted him from under a pillow.

“What the hell are you doing, Damon?! If you want to go another round, you'll have to wait. Humans need to sleep.”

Damon stayed mouth wide open for a while, then began to laugh himself silly. The day before, or rather the night before, had been one of the greatest in his life and he had almost forgotten.

“Don't you worry, sleeping beauty. We'll go at it again, but later, I promise.”

The vampire avoided a pillow as he went to the bathroom.

The first thing he saw was his reflection in the mirror, and a moronic grin on his perfect face that made him look like a fool. No matter what he tried, it wouldn't disappear, so he resigned himself to look stupid for the next hours.

Rolling his eyes, Damon went to take a shower.

The cold water was rolling down his body, and he remembered how Alaric's hands had been scouting about every one of his body curves and edges during the night. The memories of their two bodies rocking together had him shudder.

It had been...

Splendid.

The bathroom door opened on a grumpy Ric.

“I hope you're pleased with yourself. Now I can't sleep anymore.”

Damon looked down at his half-hard cock and realized he had been a bit too much enthusiastic with the night's memories. Maybe it'd be wiser not to admit how “pleased with himself” he was. He didn't want the hunter to conclude that he only thought about sex.

“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn't wake you up on purpose. I was only a bit... lost, and wasn't sure why it seemed to be that I had sex with a stranger, moreover a man, during the night.”

The vampire waited for an answer, but nothing came from the other side of the shower curtain.

Suddenly, the said curtain was drawn open and Alaric was staring at him.

“You slept around while I was gone?”

The vampire blinked, water running down his face, not sure of what to say. Why had Ric concluded this of all things? The hunter's tone was slightly menacing, and Damon finally figured it out.

“You're jealous.”

“Why wouldn't I be? So did you?”

Damon chuckled, turned the water off, before looking down. Alaric followed his gaze and watched the twitching cock with a bemused look on his face. None of them was sure of what they were doing, but it was a promising morning.

“I didn't. See? That's the result of my sexual frustration. I can assure you you were my first since a long time, and I hope you'll be the only one for a long time too.”

Alaric didn't respond for a while, then sighed.

“You're incorrigible.”

“That's what you like about me.”

“Well, whatever. Since you're already in such a state, since you look brazenly fuckable, since you're a vampire and therefore you certainly don't have a sore bottom, I guess we should take care of... that. Now, get out of this shower cabin, get yourself dry and let's try what we didn't do yesterday before I change my mind.”

Huh. Surprising. So Alaric was this kind of boyfriend. He'd never have thought.

But why was he wasting time? Sex was great. What was he complaining about, exactly?

So they had an... interesting time once again, and Damon wondered why he had been so adamant about not saying anything sooner. Well, aside from the obvious. That is, man and man relationship. Jenna. Not knowing if Ric felt that way too. Mystic Falls' bullshit. Klaus.

Alaric and him were lying lazily on the bed when he felt the need to talk.

“Had I known we were going to do this, I wouldn't have showered.”

That wasn't exactly what he had in mind when he had decided to talk with the hunter. But he couldn't seem to find anything clever to say. The vampire felt as if...

He was afraid.

Afraid of what would result in them talking. The day before had been all about seeing each other again, being relieved that they were still able to be together, and, obviously, shagging. They hadn't exactly talked, except about their love for each other. Which was already something. But they needed to figure out what would happen from now on. Possibly, before going back home.

Mystic Falls was going to be a challenge, now that they were in a relationship, Damon realized.

“I don't sleep with dirty people.”

The vampire laughed at that. Ric was exactly what he needed. Serious, and not serious at the same time. Loving, but able to control his feelings, not to let just anyone see what was really behind his front mask. Well, that came from being a Falkenbach, but it wasn't exactly the point.

Alaric was perfect for him.

And he hoped he could be perfect for the man.

“I hope you don't sleep with people at all. Open relationships are bullshit.”

The hunter looked at him over his book. He was hot, mused Damon. Maybe he could get Ric to read him a story before going to sleep, somehow. While being naked, of course.

“Well then, maybe I should consider buying a chastity belt. Of course, that means you don't get anything as well.”

“Don't.”

The vampire had growled at the sole idea. Though imagining it was... kinky.

Alaric stared at him. Right. Joking. Why the hell was he getting serious about a joke?

“Ric...”

The man put down his book and looked at him with a serious face.

“What is it? You've been fidgeting for almost half an hour.”

“What will we... do about it?”

“Do about what?”

“Us. Being together. Mystic Falls. The kids. The school. You coming back. Us coming out. Your apartment. My brother. Your family. Nothing. All of it.”

Damon suddenly noticed Alaric's hand running through his black hair and the fond look on the hunter's face. Apparently he had succeeded in exposing all of his incertainties with few and worried words. The vampire really had no composure left to deal with his lover. He had to change that. He didn't want anyone else to know how he was feeling when Alaric was around. Not for now, at least.

And well, for now he couldn't keep this stupid grin off his face, and he would certainly not go around looking like a fool if he could help it. If he found his own reflection utterly cheasy, what would others think?

“You don't have to worry about that. Sure, Mystic Falls isn't what I'd call a haven for same gender relationships, and we will most likely shock a great deal of persons when they'll hear about it. But us going out is definitely none of their business, and I believe we are more than able to handle one or two homophobic bullies. The children will come around at some point, and your brother will surely be happy not to have to worry about you stealing Elena away, I guess. As for the school, I heard the history teacher spot is considered cursed. I shouldn't have much difficulty getting it back, if they even already opened my resignation letter. Which is not a sure thing at all.”

The vampire gulped.

“So we are a thing, then?”

“If we're not I'll feel that you abused me.”

Damon rolled on his back and looked at his boyfriend with big puppy eyes. He had spent decades sharpening this skill, and was sure no one could resist his innocence. Or what looked like it, to be frank. The vampire wasn't exactly what one would call an innocent guy.

“I'm not sure you can say that. After all, it's my ass that met with your prick, not the other way around. I'm definitely not the one who took advantage of the other, in my humble opinion.”

The hunter gave him a pointed look. Somehow it felt like it wasn't the first time they had this argument. After all, they had always bantering.The only thing now, was that their verbal jousts were being somewhat more smutty.

“You looked pretty happy for someone who was being abused, I think.”

“Ah but that's because you're such a sexy abuser.”

“Not an excuse.”

The vampire pouted and tucked his head under the blue sheets, letting his white and alluring butt in plain sight on purpose. Ric rolled his eyes, stood up and went for clothes while Damon was behaving like a spoiled brat. His boyfriend was such a kid, sometimes...

Alaric looked thoughtfully at his reflection in the mirror of the bathroom. He needed a shower, and even that was an understatement. Not only had they... gotten some exercise twice already, but he still had faint blood stains on his skin from last night.

When he got out of the shower, he was feeling refreshed. Looking in the mirror once again, he put his fingers on the bite mark from the night before. It wasn't very deep, and Ric could say the vampire had behaved while taking a sip. The hunter smirked.

Their everyday life was bound to be... interesting.

When he came back in the bedroom, he found Damon still pouting under the sheets, and his grin widened. He wasn't even sure the vampire hadn't simply dozed off.

He let himself fall down next to Damon and got his answer when his boyfriend grunted loudly.

“Damon?”

“Yes?”

“How did you find me?”

The vampire stayed silent, but Ric saw him stiffening. After a while, Damon whispered something from under the sheets that the hunter couldn't understand. Alaric rolled his eyes, thought he was doing that too often since they had been reunited, and lifted the blue fabric from the vampire's face.

“Say that again?”

Ice-blue eyes were staring at him indignantly, but there was something else in them, behind the front Damon was trying to keep up. Something that looked a lot like embarassment.

“Damon.”

The vampire shrugged, sat up but refused to look at him.

“Fine. I went to see your parents. They know about... us.”

“And that's all?”

“They were... nice. Not at all what I had expected with your family background.”

“All of us aren't monsters. It's only that...No one in my family ever had feelings when it came to killing. But we know what an emotion is about for everything else, and dealing with our inhumanity is so difficult because it is only partial.”

Alaric stayed silent for a while, worrying Damon a bit. Eventually, he sighed and said it.

“I guess I'll have to stop by the main house before going back to Mystic Falls.”


	9. Human in body only

Damon and Alaric left Philadelphia in the early morning. The vampire had been sulking for hours when they finally arrived in Boston. Luckily for Ric, the two of them hadn't been in the same car, since the hunter had to give his back to his family, and Damon wasn't willing to let go of his Camaro, not that anyone would blame him for that. Actually, their parting was the very reason the vampire had been pouting.

Ric managed to get them a room in a motel, even with Damon almost leaning against his back and whispering to his ear all the naughty things they could have done in the car if the hunter had agreed to leave his behind. Refraining himself from punching the vampire in the guts, Alaric ignored the tales of the wonderful blowjobs and pornographic shows he had missed. The receptionist gave them a weird look, and a couple of customers blushed when their eyes met. Damon grinned like a mad man at that, and the hunter promised to himself that he'd make his boyfriend pay for his behavior.

They fought for over an hour in the bedroom, somehow ended up almost beheading each other, Damon admitted to having made a promise to Ric's parents, Alaric went pale, the vampire said something stupid, got his left arm broken, whined for another hour, got his “treat” as compensation, complained that it wasn't exactly a punishment for the hunter, that he'd better cancel any sexual activity from his schedule to make Alaric pay for his actions.

The man sighed and turned, resting on his side to see Damon better.

“We're going to need some rules if we want this to work.”

“Such as?”

“You don't ask to be fucked in front of people to tease me, and I don't break your bones. You stay discreet about our relationship, I mean, decent, in public, and I don't stab you when I think you're annoying. This kind of things.”

The vampire frowned, falsely offended.

“Do you think I'm a slut? I don't go around naked, as far as I know, though I concede to be a flirt.”

“Then, Mister Flirt, what do you think of smacking someone's ass in front of a receptionist?”

Damon's grin had gotten so large the hunter was wondering if it wasn't larger than his face.

“Scandalous.”

“What about pressing one's ever happy prick against someone else's hips while pretending to be picking up a fallen paper?”

Alaric's eyes were locked on Damon's. Still, he could feel his lover's fingers running on his stomach.

“Shameful.”

“Strangely enough, that's what you've been doing this evening, if I recall.”

“Maybe you'll want to punish me for being shameless, then? There's nothing a little discipline can't correct, or so I have heard.”

And there it was. Ric doubted anything could be done about Damon's bad flirting habit, but well. He wasn't going to condemn the vampire's urges to have sex, as long as it was with him only. Not right now, at least. Maybe, with some time, the novelty of being fucked by Ric would wear off, and Damon wouldn't constantly be begging for it.

The hunter surely hoped it would happen, sooner rather than later, or he'd die from exhaustion before the end of the month. As long as Damon wouldn't get bored with him, it would be for the best.

“I blame the vampire libido, the fact that we're both so utterly sexy, and my love for you.”

Alaric rolled his eyes and launched a surprise attack on his lover, who suddenly discovered himself to be pinned to the bed with both the hunter's strength and a fierce kiss.

When they woke up the day after, Alaric got himself dressed, and asked the vampire to wait for him at his parents' house. He wanted to go and see Landyn alone. They had to... talk about some things she wouldn't want anyone else to know about, even if Ric wouldn't hide anything from Damon.

No need to make the Saltzmans aware of the existence of vampires, what would eventually happen if the Head of the family decided they'd be better off with the knowing people sent to the their graves early. Ric wasn't eager to know how many Saltzmans Damon and he could kill before being killed.

Oh, and he might need to threaten Theodoric, at some point. Hopefully he wouldn't forget that one.

The hunter arrived at the main house around ten o'clock. He passed by three of his remote cousins in the hall, and all of them were giving him weird looks. If he hadn't known that the family members usually stick together, he'd have feared one of them would backstab him.

Ric knocked on the door of Landyn's office and waited. He heard some noise coming from inside, confirming that his aunt was in there, then a voice called for him to come in.

Landyn was alone in her office, looking a bit disheveled if not tired. Alaric guessed it meant she had stayed up all night, and that it was what the cold-blooded Head of the Saltzman Family looked like after a sleepless night. He wondered if he looked that way too when he didn't sleep but guessed it wasn't the case. He was a heartless murderer, after all, not a robot. As any human being, he was grumpy when he didn't get to sleep every night.

Landyn looked up from the pieces of paper she was glaring at.

“Alaric. I heard you did a good job.”

The man shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the issue.

“It was all over yesterday's news, in Philadelphia. What I don't understand, is why you didn't call me right away. Or, at least, yesterday, since right after the murder could have been a bit suspicious if ever the police were to take at look at my phone calls...”

“I got sidetracked.”

His aunt stared at him for several minutes, but Alaric ignored her. She'd have to do with that elusive answer. There were many ways he could have been unable to call, such as, with the police on his trail. And he wasn't going to give her a full report of his activities since he had finished his task.

Landyn eventually sighed and turned her attention back to the files on her desk.

Ric was about to leave when she looked up again.

“I would appreciate it if you could look into...”

The man stopped her almost immediately.

“I won't.”

His aunt stayed silent, waiting for more. No use to hope and see her dumbfounded, or at least surprised, she was Landyn bloody Saltzman.

Alaric would have liked to take a deep breath but he didn't want to look like he needed to gather some courage before making his point. In his family one had to stand firm if he wanted to be heard.

“You asked me to kill Theo's copycat, and I did it. I won't do more. Your problems with the police aren't mine, though I'd be affected if they went and discovered our family issues. Still, there is no way they'd think our family to be really cursed, and so they wouldn't believe all of us are killers. Even if they did, most of us are protected by the circumstances of our killings. I did it to protect a child, you did it when someone tried to kill you, Cassandre did it when someone tried to rape her, my father did it while he was a soldier. Only a handful of our people would be in real trouble, such as Theodoric, who never reported the murder.”

Alaric hold his tongue for a while after that, but the hell with the proprierties, he still had something to say. He knew Landyn wouldn't like it, but he also knew she wouldn't have anything to say since he was right.

“And frankly, Theo caused this mess with his, what does he call it, already, ah yes, job, so he could at least try and help. Last time I saw him, he seemed pretty smug for someone who almost had us exposed. I get it that having him meddle with the police when he is in fact the culprit in a case that has been dragging on for years wouldn't be wise, but it doesn't mean he has a right to belittle everyone else when they are covering his ass in the first place.”

Landyn was still looking at him, and Ric was surprised when he saw her sighing.

“You know about the scar being a seal, so I should as well tell you about this.”

The hunter grew more attentive. With what he had heard, from Galswinthe and Elijah, during the last months, it was possible that he already knew what she was going to reveal to him. But Landyn was the Head of the Saltzman Family, last heirs to the Falkenbach Family and its curse, and she knew about the supernatural reality of their condition. Her input could never be irrelevant.

“When Theodoric killed that man who had kidnapped him for ransom, it took us three days to find him. The seal was put on too late, and that's why Theo is worst than any of us, if not necessarily the strongest. His... human qualities have been wiped out, at least some of them. We, Saltzmans, Falkenbachs, whatever, have no feelings when it comes to death and pain, but we still are able to feel shame, pity, and other human emotions as long as it has nothing to do with killing, hurting, fighting. Theodoric... lacks some of this feelings.”

Alaric's mind and reason fought for a short time with his disgust for his cousin, and if in the end he was feeling a bit sorry for Theodoric, he still loathed the man as much as he could. No matter the reasons, Theo was a murderer, a serial killer, a hitman above anything else.

Damon, at least, was trying to do better, and if he had killed many persons, he had also been struggling with his love for a manipulative bitch. It wasn't an excuse either.

But Damon, unlike Theo, could improve. He was a vampire, and if given some of the love he had never really gotten for himself, the human being he had been before could be revived up to some point.

Theodoric...

Was human in body only, as far as Alaric was concerned.

“You do realize that it makes him all the more dangerous. From what you just told me, he's basicaly a psychopath when we are simply remorseless. The worst being that he has our Falkenbach instincts.”

Landyn winced when she heard him talking about their ancestors, meaning he knew about them too, but quickly rebuilt her neutral mask.

Alaric was definitely an interesting young nephew, and his being contumacious about the family ways was a good thing. If she could get him to care about their family more than about their killers inheritance, he may be a good choice to continue her work.

But it wasn't the time to think about it. She wasn't dead yet, and choosing a new Head of the family could wait. Moreover, coercing the young man into the position would do no good.

“Listen, Alaric. No matter what you think about him, I believe keeping Theo by our side is the best I can do, besides killing him right now, right here. At least, I have some control over him, and we are more than able to contain him if he ever were to go rabid.”

Ric mumbled something about getting rid of the hindrance, but didn't insist.

When he left, he asked of her to leave him alone.

Both of them smiled a cold smile, knowing very well it was unlikely.

The hunter met Theo on his way out of the property.

Some disguised threats were politely exchanged, and Ric left.

When he arrived at his parents' home, he was quite pleased with himself, and noticed with a delightful surprise that Diane and Edward Saltzman were already aware of their son's relationship with Damon, and totally okay with it.

The four of them spent a great evening.

They laughed, talked about his childhood, and Ric got to see Damon blush when Diane complimented how good they looked together, and how good their looks were anyway.

Alaric might have blushed too, but it was only his mum being his mum.

Damon and Alaric slept in his old room.

Keeping Damon from being sex driven even in Ric's parents' house wasn't easy.

When the hunter woke up the next morning, the vampire was sleeping next to him, in the sleeping bag instead of in the bed.

He looked frighteningly cute.

They ate breakfast with Diane and Edward, then it was time to go.

Mystic Falls wasn't the only troubles they had, as Ric had learned during their stay in the first motel. They still had to deal with a rabid Stefan, out there in the country, but where exactly, no one knew.

Still, when they left Boston in Damon's blue Camaro, Alaric felt at peace.

Maybe life could be good, after all.

Good enough for a Falkenbach and a vampire to live somehow peacefully, at least.

 


	10. Oh-so-sweet-and-sanguineous-honeymoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, more or less in 3x01.  
> But as the rest of the story suggests it, things happened before so the events aren't exactly the same as in the show.

 “What's up, Liz?”

Damon had parked pretty perilously on the side of the road when he had seen who was calling him. For that stunt, he was being glared at by Alaric, but none of them really cared. They didn't have the same danger standards as others.

“ _Listen, I'm not sure about anything. But as you already know, since you've been asking for more than two months now, I've been gathering clues about the most gruesome murders since your brother... well, you know what I mean. Some of them put aside, I've got a general and believable trail. The last one leads us in the Tennesse.”_

Alaric and Damon had been on the roads for almost three months, looking after hints about Stefan and his happy trip to the land of the Rippers and contacting some of Damon's associates, but they had had no luck until now. Lately, Liz Forbes had joined them in their joyful and bloody quest, though she was staying in Mystic Falls.

“Any specifics?”

“ _From what I know, the bodies are in pieces, and the scene is covered in blood. No one saw anything, And the police is only starting to take a look.”_

Damon sighed loudly. If the authorities were already aware of the murders, it wouldn't be easy to sneak in and gather informations.

“Thanks, Liz. Tell me the location, and we're on our way.”

“ _We?”_

Of course, Damon had said nothing about what he liked to call his Oh-so-sweet-and-sanguineous-honeymoon, causing Ric to roll his eyes and even, sometimes, to punch him. So Liz had no idea he had taken back the history teacher, only informing her that the man had “health issues” and wouldn't be back to school before the end of the term. No need to say Alaric hadn't approved, but since they could stop a rabid vampire from killing innocent people, and he had no valid explanation for his disappearance, he had eventually complied.

The vampire grinned at the cellphone, oblivious to the fact that smiles weren't sent through phone networks. Somehow, the Mystic Falls' sheriff figured out he was smirking, and said she didn't want to know anything about anything, especially if it involved bloody vampires and psychopathic friends.

Damon glanced at Ric, and wondered how much this statement could be true while being so clearly false. The hunter wasn't a vampire and wasn't exactly psychopathic, but he had proved himself to be quite bloody at times, and he certainly was his friend.

Friend, best friend, boyfriend.

Well, for the man to be all this to Damon, he surely had to be different.

Alaric glared at the vampire.

“I'm certain I don't want to know what the sheriff said if it's about me.”

Damon gave Ric his most innocent smile and almost leaned on him.

“Why is that? Compliments, sweetheart, I swear.”

“If you consider it a compliment, it surely means it would be a shame for any proper human being.”

Damon vamped out just for the hell of it, and his left hand searched for the man's shoulder. When he felt the Falkenbach scar through the fabric of Alaric's shirt, he smiled widely, allowing his fangs to be seen.

“We're not proper human beings. I'm not human, you're not proper. Deal with it, love.”

“You meant to say you were neither human nor proper, didn't you?”

“As if. Enough talking, we're going to Tennessee. I'm driving.”

The hunter looked at the vampire, slightly bored. He wished he had something to do, even grading despairing essays if it came to that, but something to do. He still felt under stress after his return to Boston, his meeting with Landyn and Theodoric, and let's not forget about the part where his new boyfriend was supposed to be a dead new boyfriend.

“You're always driving.”

Damon arched an eyebrow, and started the car. They had to get going if they wanted to be there for Elena's birthday. No matter how much he complained about the girl's heroin complex, he still cared about her. Most of the time, it wasn't exactly her fault that she had to make shitty choices. When one gets to choose between betting their own lives and getting other persons to die, it was understandable that one would choose a way that wouldn't please everyone.

“It's my car.”

“I was only saying that you didn't need to state your point every time.”

They squabbled for almost an hour before finally staying silent, glaring daggers at each other, and occasionally ogling each other.

The house Liz Forbes had told Damon about was in the countryside, but they couldn't have missed it unless they had been driving on the wrong road. Yellow police tape was all over the house, several police cars were parked near, a forensic team was completely bewildered at what they had seen and discussing it with a sightly sick look on their faces.

Damon drove past the house and parked not too far away, but still far enough not to be seen.

The vampire could get them in with compulsion, but compelling so many people was a bit tricky, especially if he were to forget someone. He looked with hope at Alaric, who rolled his eyes and searched the car trunk for more suitable clothes.

“Don't tell me you never played cop before?”

Damon smirked at the question and tried his best to look smug. No need to say it didn't take him much effort. Smugness was his natural state, as Ric had said at dinner.

“I did use handcuffs and a policeman cosplay, but it was mostly in bed, if you know what I mean...”

The hunter ignored him and grabbed a black suit in his suitcase. It'd look a bit wrinkled, but since to get to the house one had to come by car, it wouldn't be so odd.

Of course, Damon didn't turn so that he could change in private.

“Instead of ogling me, get changed too. I don't want to try and pass us as detectives with you looking like a pimp.”

Damon was about to answer back as soon as Alaric began talking, but when he heard the shameful word, he only stayed with his mouth wide open for some time. Then he looked at his expensive-and-totally-open-black-shirt, stared at his grey-and-totally-showing-his-hip-bones-pants, and wondered why Ric was being so vehement about it. The fact that he certainly didn't look like a police officer passed by his brain, but he liked it better to think the hunter was becoming possessive.

But still.

“I don't look like a pimp.”

Alaric raised an eyebrow but didn't bother to look at him, going through Damon's stuff in search of something less inappropriate to wear. The task proved to be arduous.

“I look like a freaking model.”

“You do realize cops don't wear thousands dollars shirts, don't you?”

Damon pouted but took the grey suit his boyfriend was handing him, reluctantly agreeing to change into it. He liked the suit, but he didn't like to be told what to do. Even if Ric was right.

“They do. In cop shows.”

“And we're not in a cop show, so you behave. And even if cop shows' cops wear thousands dollars shirts, it's still appropriate clothing.”

The vampire mumbled something about flower patterns and Miami, but refrained himself from talking back. Alaric wasn't even so interested in the matter, and it was him who had the argument going on.

The hunter took away the black glasses Damon was considering, saying they weren't playing _Men in Black_ , and they walked to the house.

A policeman tried to stop them, Damon compelled him into obeying Ric's directions who knew better. The man managed to make it look like they were here to talk to the detectives in charge of the case, and seemed utterly sorry when he heard they weren't there anymore. Then he accidently let a slip of the tongue inform the policeman there had been other similar cases in the nearest states, one of them being their own, and that the highter-ups were thinking of handing the cases over to the FBI, if the murders appeared to have been commited with the same modus operandi. It was such a shame they couldn't take a look, simply to see if they were so similar.

Damon snorted as the policeman let them him, asking them to be cautious. Of course, the man was compelled, and would never have prevented them from coming in even if Alaric had told him crap, but that way he could still explain why he had let them in if someone asked. Hopefully no one would, but it was a precaution for the man's future.

Ric was so caring that the vampire would end up being jealous of a pebble one of these days.

When they were finally alone, they started studying the house. The bodies had been removed, but there was no mistaking: someone had died in here, and the killer hadn't exactly cleaned the place. Blood splashes had colored half of the walls and furnitures in dark red, and pools of dried blood could be seen near the sofa. No wonder the forensics guys were so puzzled.

Alaric glanced at Damon when the vampire grumbled.

“Definitely him.”

“I would never have believed... And usually, I'm pretty good at reading people...”

The vampire sneered, watching a bloodied mat closely.

“Don't worry, Ric. You're a wonder when it comes to evaluating someone. But Stefan... It's like there are two of him, really. I guess it's because he never truly accepted being a vampire, a blood-sucking monster, because he never forgave himself for killing the first human he killed, namely, our father, because he's always going to blame himself for making me as I am, the frantic vampire killer. When he snaps... he's not here anymore, he's... someone else. Even you can't see it behind the real him... unless the other one is the real him, I'm not sure about that...”

Damon pulled the mat aside and found a hatch in the floor.

“Why are you always trying to get him to drink human blood if you know it triggers him off?”

The vampire sighed. Of course, Alaric wasn't stupid. The hunter knew Damon well enough to hear in his voice how he cared for his little brother.

Even when he had been trying to destroy Stefan's life, after the first and as he knew now not last Katherine fiasco, Damon had felt sorry for forcing his brother. He had hated Stefan. But what the young vampire had become after turning, the thing he had forced him to be once again in the early twentieth century... Well, it had been no fun to destroy this thing. After all, the Ripper of Monterrey couldn't be destroyed, since he wasn't feeling anything. Stefan had been quick to switch off his humanity.

And to be frank, Damon hated him, back then, but at the same time...

No matter.

“The thing is, I'm certain he only has to accept what and who he is, and then, no more Ripper. But no, he's too afraid to do that... And now, we have this kind of problems to deal with.”

“Maybe we'd better put the house on fire, if the police hasn't found the hatch yet.”

Alaric and Damon were staring at what was obviously a werewolf's claws marks.

“Not a good idea. They saw the worst already, and this particular piece of evidence won't disappear with a mere fire. We should as well let them work and try to guess who exactly could have done... that.”

The hunter looked around once more and nodded.

Stefan had done quite a show in the house.

They left the crime scene with a polite nod to the confused policeman waiting outside, not sure anymore why he had let them in, and walked to the Camaro. They were long gone when the man realized something didn't add up.

As Damon was driving like a mad man in the direction of Mystic Falls, they wondered why Klaus could be searching for werewolves. The idea of other hybrids didn't sit well with neither of them.

One was enough of a pain in the ass.

“Maybe we'll be home on time for Elena's birthday. Last time she phoned she was so angry I didn't even get a chance to tell her you were with me.”

Ric sneered at that.

“Or maybe you didn't want her to urge you to take me back instead of going on your little... I quote, 'Oh-so-sweet-and-sanguineous-honeymoon'.”


	11. That sounded like trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, back in Mystic Falls, hum?

Elena was mentally glaring at the coming crowd, though she was doing her best not to look unhappy with the... “surprise” birthday party Caroline had been so not discreetly putting into motion since more than a week. How the blond girl had succeeded to get Damon to agree was beyond her. Really, who would have thought the vampire would accept a flow of teenagers in his house with his bourbon bottles, for Elena's birthday?

Certainly not the said girl.

Her eyes fell on Jeremy, already half-drunk, and possibly half-stoned on drugs she didn't even want to know the names of. The young woman had decided to take it upon herself and stop him from wasting his life, but it wasn't a simple task. For now, she was utterly failing, and she knew it.

Elena tried to reach him, but the teenager spotted her and disappeared.

Another failed attempt.

She avoided two boys she didn't even know and forced her way to the restricted section of the house, where no one, absolutely no one else than the habitual bunch of supernatural occurences, was allowed. There, she met Caroline, sipping on a blood bag with a guilty look on her face. They talked a little, but at some point the blond girl had to rush to the party, having heard a loud crash that certainly didn't bode well for the house's furnitures.

Elena sighed.

She was so going to be killed, turned and then killed again by Damon if anything had happened to his precious, let's say, library for exemple.

Really, Elena was trying to be optimistic.

But she couldn't see anything good in her life anymore.

She was trying, though. Only, she wasn't succeeding.

What about the people she cared for? Dead, dead, vampire, dead, vampire and gone, dead, gone, werewolf, dead, witch, junkie, and... Well, she wasn't even sure anymore who was what, after all, she hadn't been keeping tabs lately. The number of “dead” labels was too depressing.

With Elizabeth Forbes in the know and Caroline's compulsion, Elena and Jeremy had somehow managed to avoid the no-adult-guardian-problem, and now that the young woman was an adult as far as the law was concerned, they would be alright. More or less. If she had too, Elena was planning to take Jeremy's guardianship. But it'd still be better if Ric were to come back.

It wasn't because she now was an adult, that she didn't need one.

The door flung open, and the girl was ready to shout “restricted area” when she realized who was the man entering the room. Well, not exactly the man. The vampire. Not the vampire she wanted to see so much lately, but still one she kind of liked. Strangely enough, with all he had done.

And even better, there was another man behind him, a real, human man, this time, one that she had resigned herself not to see around anymore.

Alaric shut the door behind Damon and looked at Elena, sitting in the kitchen with a very surprised expression on her face. The hunter grinned a bit awkwardly, but he was happy to see her.

“Ric! You're all right! We were worried, you know.”

And apparently, she was happy to see him too.

“And what, no greetings for me?”

The young woman cocked her head to the side and studied Damon as if she hadn't noticed his presence up until now.

“You didn't call to say you'd be in time, and you didn't call to say you had found him, so I'm ignoring you for now.”

“Well then, maybe I should have kept him to myself, After all, it's not like you need a legal guardian anymore, and little Jeremy is already a lost cause.”

This comment earned the vampire a fork being thrown at him. The aiming was acceptable, if a little too much to the left, but of course, he caught it before it could hurt his face.

Ric's voice interrupted their antics.

“Legal guardian?”

Damon shuddered against his will. The voice was a bit too cold, a bit too dreadful, a bit too furious. And if it was so, it was certainly the vampire's fault. Maybe, if he had told the hunter about the guardian thing before... But he hadn't, knowing very well that the man would have run back to Mystic Falls if he had.

And they wouldn't have had their road trip.

Which would have been a shame.

Elena looked at the vampire suspiciously before turning to Alaric and informing him of Jenna's last wishes, including him becoming Jeremy's and hers guardian. Of course, at the time, she hadn't been of age, and now she was, so it wasn't the same anymore, but Jeremy still needed a figure of authority in his life... and truth to be told, Elena did too.

Ric went various shades of grey and green, before being carefully led to a chair.

“I'm sorry, Elena, but I simply can't. I... I'm definitely no example for either of you, and I don't think I can raise normal children, even less teenagers...”

The young woman frowned at the use of the word “normal”. She wasn't normal, she was a bloody doppelganger, and a supernatural magnet.

Damon chose not to say anything, but he had a pretty good idea of what the hunter meant by that. Alaric was a Saltzman, a Falkenbach, and had always believed that if he were to have kids, they'd be the same as him. Cursed, and not exactly with the same ethics as anyone else.

Elena was a doppelganger, sure, but she was human, and had a human mind. Jeremy was normal.

Oh, and the thing between Damon and Alaric might have something to do with his unease, too. After all, he couldn't possibly be in charge of his ex's wards when he was back to dating already, and a totally improper vampire at that. That was... too much of a headache to come.

“Well, we're not five years old, so, if you could simply do so that Jeremy goes to school and doesn't go back to some unhealthy habits I don't like to talk about, which, I'm sorry to say, he already has gone back to, it'd be a lot. You know, keeping an eye on us, scolding us for coming home late...”

Damon felt the need to be sarcastic, and completed her list of guardian duties.

“...And beheading one or two rude vampires coming after the miss once in a while.”

The two humans glared at him, and the vampire thought it might have been wiser to stay silent, after all, Ric had almost forgot about his boyfriend's sins. But as always, Damon had to be sassy, or life would be boring, so he had to talk. And now he wondered if he'd have to sleep on the couch this night.

Wait, if Alaric was going to be the children's guardian... Wouldn't he have to live in their house?

Oh shit.

May Elena forget about that, may Elena forget about that, may Elena for...

“Come on, I'm sure Jenna and my parents would be okay with you sleeping in one of their rooms.”

Too late.

Damon didn't listen to the rest of the conversation, too busy with pouting and grumbling and sulking. Really, people have no idea how much concentration one needs to do the three actions at the same time. He should have gotten an award, if only for finding out it was possible to do so.

His attention went back to the conversation when Elena almost shouted, remembering something she had to tell the hunter.

What was it, now? Was the world falling apart? Had Jeremy become clever? Had Carol Lockwood been belly dancing while they were away? No? Then, it was certainly not interesting enough, Damon could go back to brooding because his Ric wasn't only his anymore.

“Ric, there is someone who wants to see you.”

Ah?

It might prove to be interesting, actually.

Alaric shifted in a more comfortable position, almost sure he wouldn't like it. Why? Really? If someone wanted to see him, it was usually someone from his family, or someone with questions he couldn't answer without spilling the beans about murders and blood and victims.

“Someone you know?”

The girl shaked her head.

“Never seen before. He arrived in town about one month ago, and everyone is talking about him, but no one really knows anything.”

That sounded like trouble.

“What does he look like?”

“Well, he'd be handsome, I guess... no, cute would be more accurate. Long, black hair, and an eyepatch. I think that's why everyone is talking about him. You don't often see someone with an eyepatch. I suppose he has been in an accident or something...”

She stopped talking when she saw how the hunter had paled at the mention of the eyepatch.

Damon too was surprised at Ric's reaction. Sure, the man seemed strange, but unless he was out to steal his boyfriend, the vampire couldn't see what was so bad about him. And, before anyone asks, there was no way Damon would let anyone snatch his Alaric Saltzman. The key word was “his”. His Alaric, his Ric, his hunter, his Saltzman, his Falkenbach. No one would steal him away as long as the vampire was alive. Not even a cute man. Yuck. Cute man. It sounded awful.

And there he was again, being sidetracked. He really needed to focus on something important, such as, why was Alaric growing paler by the minute, instead of becoming completely gaga over his love for the hunter.

“Damon, I'm afraid we need to go and see this man right now.”

The hunter's voice was almost pleading.

“Oh, but he's here.”

The man and the vampire stared at Elena as if she had grown a second head. Though Damon still wasn't sure why he was acting as bewildered as Alaric.

The young woman shrugged, went to the door, opened it slightly, took a look at the crowd on the other side of the door, and closed the door. Then she made a sign for them to come.

“He's just there, near the shelves. He has been coming here everyday since he arrived, I take it someone told him you two were friends.”

The hunter took some time to calm down. He couldn't let the other one see he was disturbed with his coming to Mystic Falls. Worst of all, he couldn't let the other one, the other freaking Saltzman, know he was vulnerable. Of course, Alaric could beat him if he had to. But... Well, there were too many people in the boarding house, too many potential victims, too many potential hostages.

“Elena, you stay in here. I don't want you anywhere near this... this man.”

The young woman was startled by the hatred in his voice, but she agreed to stay in the kitchen. Whoever this guy was, Alaric clearly didn't like him.

Ric opened the door, and his eyes instantly settled on his cousin.

“Damon, may I present to you my dearest cousin, Theodoric Saltzman?”

So, it was the infamous cousin, mused Damon, the one who was supposedly worst than the vampire when it came to killing people without a valid reason. No wonder his boyfriend wasn't happy.

“I thought you had threatened him?”

Alaric winced as they made their way to the troublesome guest.

“I did. But he's downright mental, and it seems he has taken an interest in me, I mean, more than before, now that I have clearly expressed my distate for him. If you could refrain from acting rash, it might actually help. He won't try anything with so many witnesses, but he's a lot like you about one thing: if he's not pleased, you could find a body in you bathroom tomorrow, and no one will know what happened.”

“I love your family, Ric.”

“Well, I don't.”

“I suppose getting rid of him won't do?”

“Unless you want three or four other Saltzmans to deal with by the end of the week. Considering he doesn't kill you before you kill him.”

“So that's a no.”

The two of them finally joined Theodoric. Damon had to say, he looked a bit like his sister, Cassandre, with his black, long, perfect hair, but he gave off a disturbing vibe.

Theodoric Saltzman bowed slightly his head when he saw Alaric. Or, more likely, when they were close enough to talk, because he had certainly noticed his cousin a long time before.

“Ric. I only wanted to warn you: I'm staying in town for a while. I'm interested in what you consider proper... for people like us.”


	12. Fluffy bunnies and cute butterflies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caroline is awesome...

“I suppose I can't get you to change your decision?”

Theodoric Saltzman gave his cousin a patronizing smile before walking away.

Damon looked at Alaric's face, searching for the tiniest bit of information, but no, the man was like his cousin: unreadable when he wished to be so. And for sure, Ric hadn't been willing to give away anything in his conversation with Theo. So Damon had no idea of what was going on in his boyfriend's head.

What he had an idea about, was that Theodoric Saltzman was creepy for a human being. Not the good, weird kind of creepy, but the freezing, unpredictable kind of creepy. When compared to Alaric and Edward, the two other Falkenbachs Damon knew, the cousin was colder, less human. As if he had less feelings. A bit like a switched off vampire, actually.

Finally Ric relaxed a little. The first thing he did was to tell Elena she could leave the kitchen, though she had to be careful. He then asked her if it was a problem if he was to stay at the boarding house for the night. The young woman crooked an eyebrow but agreed.

At first the lovers spent some time outside, sharing a drink, and Ric said a memorable thing about being a hellish teacher and a shitty responsible adult, surely referring to the massive alcohol consumption in the house and his lack of action concerning it, as well as to the less important but existing anyway use of drugs they had spotted during the party.

But the hunter couldn't relax, after his discussion with his cousin, and they felt a bit out of place.

So Damon and Alaric ended up alone in the restricted area of the house, to the vampire's great pleasure, and to the hunter's relief. They could still hear loud music coming from the sitting room, and Damon wasn't really happy when some teenager began to shout in drunken stupor, but it was better than nothing.

They went to the vampire's room, lay down on the bed and stayed this way for a couple of minutes.

“Any idea what he wanted?”

Ric shook his head, staring in the shadows with his boyfriend's head on his chest. He wasn't sure when exactly during their trip the vampire had decided it would be a great habit to do that, but he had to admit it was comfortable. Couple habits, he mused, same thing as how Damon was always the one making breakfast while the hunter was handling the loundry.

“You heard him. He wishes to know what is 'proper'. The hell if I know what it means.”

“Basically he's on his way to make your life hell, no?”

“Likely. Promise you won't try to kill him unless he himself tries to kill someone.”

Damon chuckled. Obviously, he had thought of the possiblity to do that.

“Should I talk to Liz?”

Alaric took some time to think before answering. Telling the police was the dumbest thing to do for a Falkenbach, but they were talking about Elizabeth Forbes, not some random sheriff. The woman had a vampire daughter she was trying to hide from her vampire hunters deputies while being friend with the vampire spy in the Founder's Council. True, their friendship was a bit awkward lately, but still.

The hunter sighed. Theo was so going to be a headache...

“Let me one or two days to think about it. I don't want to rush anything with this psycho, it could trigger him into doing something none of us will like.”

Damon shrugged his shoulders and decided it was time for some cuddling.

His hands were already on the man's belt when Ric stopped him.

“What?”

“There are kids downstairs.”

“And?”

“Do you really want me to spell it out for you?”

“They can come and watch for all I care.”

Alaric's hands grabbed his tighly. It was no laughing matter, apparently, and the vampire should better remember it. It wasn't the first time the hunter had been angry at him for not being private enough, and each time, they had ended up fighting for at least three days.

“I was going to say you could perhaps lock your door in case, but since you're so open minded, I could as well leave. It's not like I didn't have an apartment waiting for me.”

The hunter was already standing at the door, and Damon panicked a little.

“Erm, wait. Ric? Hey! It was a joke. You know, I don't want anyone else to see what's mine. Well, I do kind of want everyone to see and be jealous of me for having someone as wonderful as you, but I don't want them to see your dick. I'm not the sharing type. And, wait, are you actually making fun of me right now or are you really angry? Because I can never tell with you...”

Ric turned to face him and rolled his eyes.

“I wasn't joking, but I wasn't really angry either. It's simply, Damon, that you need to be less sex driven. I don't think you only want this to be about the sex, do you?”

Ugh, tricky question. Of course he wanted more, but he had the feeling the man was going to pull a stunt he wouldn't like, such as, in order to prove his words, no sex for three weeks. He had had a girlfriend like that, around the Sixties. But with her, he didn't really want more, he only wanted to play a bit. In the end, he had drained her after an argument. Not something he would tell Ric.

“Damon.”

No evading move, then. Hum. Hell, he had forgotten how being in love and being a couple could be difficult. Not that he had ever been in a real relationship with anyone before.

“Fine, I don't want your body only, I want you to love me, fluffy bunnies and cute butterflies. Now can we move on?”

Alaric laughed at that. The vampire was really one of a kind.

“Tomorrow.”

Damon's features darkened, then lightened. It could have been worst.

“I want a kiss, then.”

“A kiss it is.”

The hunter's hand caressed his boyfriend's jaw, and when the fingertips left his chin, their lips were together. Alaric's tasted of bourbon, Damon's of blood, and really, none of them were bothered.

Someone opened the room's door, the man and the vampire heard a shriek, and a click informed them that someone had taken a picture with their cellphone. Damon waited a second then got off of Ric to glare at the intruder.

Caroline was grinning as if she had just won the lottery, her phone at arms length. Now they knew how the intruder had been so fast to snap a picture: she was a vampire.

“What do you want, blondie?!”

Alaric watched, a bit bewildered, as Damon snarled at the young miss Forbes. He had no idea where all this was going, but he felt in his guts he would hear about it for years. One does not simply kiss Damon Salvatore without having to endure some giggling from the overbearing blond of Mystic Falls. Especially if they are the high school history teacher and legal guardian of the authoritarian vampire's best friend. If only he had been completely drunk, he'd have an excuse, but no, he wasn't.

It wasn't that he wanted to keep their relationship a secret. Okay, maybe a little. But he had no problem with it being known. He wasn't sure about the school, though, about the students' parents, about almost everyone in the small town.

As if dating Damon and having Theo in town wasn't enough of a headache.

Caroline invited herself in the room and closed the door, locking it this time, as if she was planning to hear everything from how they had fallen in love with each other to how they did it, not forgetting what was their favorite colors. That might have scared the teacher a little.

Damon tried to shoo her away, but the younger vampire glared at him and sat down on the bed.

“I don't do heart to heart, barbie.”

“I don't care, I only want to threaten you to be correct with him or I'll make sure you don't get anyone else in your bed for the next fifty years.”

Damon stared at her not sure of what to think, stared at Ric not sure of what to do, and stared at the door not sure of when to run. Caroline turned to her teacher and asked, sparkles in her eyes.

“Now, what I want to know, is how much you're ready to pay so that I won't tell everyone downstairs.”

“What?!”

The two lovers had almost screamed together, and the blond rolled her eyes as if they didn't know how to tell a joke from the truth. Which was, apparently, the case.

“No, seriously, I need to know, I am, after all, the queen of gossip around here.”

“You're not gossiping about us.”

The tone in Damon's voice was clear. He wouldn't allow her to do so, and Ric felt a bit better. He had feared the vampire would find it hilarious and even worsen the rumors.

Caroline shrugged. Those adults could really be thick headed, couldn't they?

“I won't. But when the gossiping begins, and it will, trust me about that, I can't be seen as a queen of gossip who doesn't know anything about you two, especially since we know each other pretty well.”

“Ric, me, together, happy, forever and ever, no kids intended obviously, now get out and leave us alone.”

“Fine. But don't complain if Elena attacks you tomorrow morning thinking it's a complicated plot to get to her through Alaric.”

And with that said, she left.

The vampire and the hunter stared at the door some more time, then stared at each other, then at the door once again, and finally at each other again. Damon stated blankly that he had no idea what was the deal with today's teenagers, Alaric told him he had no clue either. Somehow, the noise from downstairs sounded really threatening at the moment, and they were both waiting for the door to burst open and Elena to rush at them with a stake and some duct tape.

“I guess that mean we're going to be outed?”

Ric nodded slowly. This was becoming harder by the minute not to laugh loudly. All of a sudden, his stress had disappeared and he could only see how comical his life had turned in less then twenty minutes. Caroline Forbes was a peculiar savior, but a savior nonetheless.

That's when he saw the very serious expression on his boyfriend's face.

Damon seemed to be really concerned with the hunter's reaction to the soon-to-be-news of their relationship. It was a bit unsettling. After all, it wasn't a basic boyfriend, but the vampire flirt of Mystic Falls.

Ric smiled softly.

When Damon loved, he loved deeply.

And for that, he would never put his relationship in jeopardy by overlooking his loved one's point of view. He had done too many errors in the past, loving someone he shouldn't have, destroying his brother's life, going after a girl who was already taken.

“You're sure you're all right with it?”

Ric chuckled lightly. A concerned vampire just for him was very cute. He refrained from frowning at the thought. Lately he was having this kind of ideas more often than not. But Damon wasn't exactly the definition of cute. More like handsome, awesome and deadly.

Love could do wonders to the brain.

Alaric collected his thoughts and went back to the matter at hand.

“As long as it's only our relationship that is outed, I don't care. I love you, Damon. Doesn't matter if you're you. Doesn't matter if you're a man. Doesn't matter if everyone knows about us.”

Yes, exactly. It didn't matter, even if Damon had some problems of self-restraint. The hunter was working on that. A little love was all the vampire needed, someone to care for him. Many persons, if possible. If Damon coud get better at dealing with his life, Stefan would eventually open up to his brother, maybe even trust him. That is, if Ric and the vampire could get the little brother to be a bit more human than he was at the time. But first things first. Caroline was already being carefree around Damon, which was a bit astonishing.

Hopefully, Alaric could get the vampire to be a better person, if a not a perfect one.

Then again, the Falkenbach wasn't an example. He wouldn't try to transform the vampire in a grass-eating sheep. Only to turn the rabid wolf into a healthy wolf.

Yes.

Love could do wonders to the brain, you only had to give it a chance.

For Damon and him, Alaric was more than willing to give it several chances.


	13. A speck of dust in his eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, me and my irresistible urge to save people...

Alaric had fallen asleep quickly after Caroline's visit, but he was awake after the first buzz from Damon's phone.

He had always been a light sleeper, and he suspected everyone in his family was. Once, when he was six years old, someone had sent an assassin after Landyn to take her out, and the hitman had thought it a good idea to sneak up on her during her sleep. Clearly, it hadn't been. From what he had heard from the adults, his aunt had been awake at the very moment the man had put a foot on the floor. The young Ric had never known what had happened to the man after that, but he was certain the police hadn't been called.

Sending an assassin after the Saltzmans was one of the dumbest things to do. Each of them was as dangerous as a professional hitman. And Alaric had a sneaking suspicion that every Falkenbach had always had a slightly more efficient body than the average. Theodoric, for example, was way stronger than one could believe given his slender stature, and Landyn had not half the muscular mass needed with her strength. Himself, he had a good stature, athletic enough, but not exagerated, and yet he could take down opponents way more versed in physical activities, though he usually relied more on his speed and precision.

Anyway, he spent most of his nights in a semi-slumber, unless he was very tired.

And the phone buzzing was more than enough to wake him up.

Still, Alaric decided not to move. If it didn't concern him, he could as well go back to sleep. And his own cellphone hadn't buzzed, so it didn't concern him.

Damon, on the other hand, picked up his phone and asked with a half-sleeping voice who it was.

He didn't like the answer, as he stiffened next to Ric, but the hunter thought his boyfriend would wake him if he needed him. If it was only about a vampire running amok in Mystic Falls, Damon knew better than to deprive him of sleep. They had traveled through most of the nearby states, they had sneaked on a crime scene during the afternoon, and he would have to deal with Theo starting tomorrow.

So, Alaric had had enough for now.

And Damon knew that. If it was serious enough, he would wake him. If not, the vampire would deal with it alone.

Ric heard the vampire mumbling at the phone, he felt him kissing lightly his cheek, and he heard the door being shut. That certainly meant he could go back to sleep.

Damon saw the crowd on the ground floor, and decided he had no time for that, so he simply jumped from the nearest window onto the quack grass. No one had seen him, and if they had, they'd think they had had too much to drink at the party.

As he left the boarding house, he wondered if it would have been better to ask Alaric to come with him. But Stefan had said to come alone, or Andie would pay. And Andie was his friend.

Anyway, he wasn't going to kill Stefan, unless he really had to, and Alaric and himself were better at killing people than at keeping people alive. Ric couldn't really help him with this one. Or he hoped he couldn't, because if he could and having thought he couldn't led to Andie's death, Damon wouldn't forgive himself for that.

How had all this happened? Why had Stefan gotten Andie involved in their vampiric problems?

Because no matter what Damon said, he still cared about the woman. Hell, she was one of his rare friends, with Elizabeth Forbes, and that was something.

When the vampire arrived at Andie's workplace, the lights were off and no one was here. But he could hear whispers and crying from the tv set studio.

Damon went in.

A light went on.

And the vampire couldn't see a thing.

He called out for Stefan, who was just behind the projector.

Damon sighed. Dealing with blood-addict-Stefan was never a funny thing to do. There was a lot of bickering, and the oldest brother had sometimes the impression he was dealing with his own emotionless self. No need to say, his own emotionless self was a bastard, and dealing with him was a hassle.

Actually, he didn't have the chance to deal with his blood-addict-brother, since Stefan simply threatened him, showed him where Andie was, and ordered her to jump to her death before disappearing.

The vampire paled, and rushed to the falling Andie, but not matter what he did, he knew it was too late, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop her fall. He knew, she was going to die.

There was a loud and terrible noise, the clatter of bones breaking, the sound of flesh teared with the shock, and then nothing else happened. Damon stayed dumbfounded, staring at the space where Andie's body should have been, but he could only see some blood on the floor.

There was no body.

How could there be no body? When people died, weren't they supposed to leave lifeless bodies behind them? Why wasn't there a body?

So the vampire was standing there, in a tv studio, and looking at a little pool of blood on the floor. It was almost as if Stefan hadn't come and condamned Andie to her death, it seemed like it had all been a nightmare. Had it been a nightmare?

Damon looked around, not really seeing. He went around the room, not really caring. He listened to the silence, not really hearing. No matter what was the truth, this wasn't it.

Andie wasn't dead, because if she was, there would have been a body.

Suddenly, anger rose in his heart, and he knew he had had enough. Stefan, Stefan, always Stefan! Stefan the dear child, father's favorite, Katherine's favorite, Elena's favorite! Stefan, the one who had friends, the vampire upon whom one could depend. Stefan Salvatore the good, the bright, the nice, Saint Stefan of all things! Why was he running away from his friends, from the girl who loved him? Damon never had any real friends. No one who really loved him! And was he running away?!

No.

The vampire calmed down.

He had Alaric. He was Ric's favorite, not Stefan. He was starting to get along with Caroline, even if that was a bit awkward. He was friend with Liz, strange as it sounded.

And Stefan had to deal with the crazy Niklaus, to protect Elena. It wasn't an easy job, he mused. So he could understand, if he couldn't approve of Stefan's doing.

Still, he didn't like that his little brother was out killing his friends. It was supposed to be his job! He was the evil and heartless and horrible vampire brother. Not Stefan. Stefan was supposed to be the kind, caring vampire brother.

All this was because of Klaus.

Damon made his mind up. Klaus didn't want him to get his little brother back? Fair enough. But when Stefan would be freed from the Original, he'd make sure to make Klaus' life a living hell. Be it in three decades or three centuries. He was certain he could come up with something involving wolfsbane and vervain. Like, spicking everything and everyone the bastard would possibly drank from. He'd do it in a way no one would ever knew what happened, and...

Right.

Now wasn't the time for his mad rambling.

Damon was feeling a bit better, now that he had pinned the responsibility of everything wrong that had happened in his life on Klaus. It wasn't even such an exageration, afer all, his life hd been ruined by vampires. And Katherine. Who was a vampire. And vampires had appeared with the Originals. So, blaming an original for all the shit in his life wasn't so stupid.

Damon let himself fall on the floor, not far away from Andie's handbag. When his eyes fell on the purse, he felt bad again.

Andie had died. And mostly because of him. He didn't know how her body had disappeared, but maybe he had only been denying the truth, somehow, and maybe, if he looked to the pool of blood he'd see a body. Maybe he wasn't exactly in his right mind.

He didn't dare to look.

Instead, the vampire reached for the bag. Maybe she had pictures in it? Damon felt like looking at his deceased friend's pictures.

When he pulled the handbag to himself, Damo heard a metallic sound and frowned. He searched the bag, and his hand touched something cold. Intrigued, he grabbed it.

The vampire paled when he recognized the mirror he had given to the journalist, and felt like his stomach was rolling over his other internal organs when he noticed it was open. Hope made its way to his brain. It was a grim, sinister, unpleasant kind of hope, but it was still hope.

Could the mirror have protected Andie, as it had protected Rose? Was it why there wasn't a body?

What had Bonnie said about the mirror? He couldn't remember.

Wasn't it something about taking in the essence of a person? Or was it about taking in the essence of a dying person? Was there any way it could have worked even without being activated by a witch? Or was it only working on a supernatural being?

Damon was literally all over the place, hoping, fearing what would be the answers to his questions. Was there any chance that Andie had, somehow, survived Stefan's uncalled for stunt?

He took a look at the pocket mirror.

When he had asked Andie to keep it with her, he hadn't thought about all that. He hadn't wondered if it would protect her too, seeing as she was a human, and there wasn't a witch with her to ensure everything went smoothly if she ever were to die. The only thing he had wondered about, was whether or not the mirror could handle a second essence to bear.

The vampire's fears were confirmed when he could only see his own reflection in the damned mirror.

But Andie's body was nowhere to be seen, and he couldn't see Rose in the mirror either.

There had to be an explanation.

Andie couldn't really be dead.

Or could she?

He felt a pang in chest, and said nothing.

Andie was dead. Gone. For good.

Damon snorted, and tried to laugh it off as a minor inconvenience. Soon enough, he stopped trying, for he didn't feel like it. There was no one here, so why was he pretending?

Who was he kidding? Even he had feelings. Even more now that he was happy. Before Alaric, he would have acted as if he didn't care, and, truthfully, he might not have cared much. After Alaric...

The vampire closed the pocket mirror, and at that exact moment, when he saw the mirror in a certain angle, his heart missed a beat. Carefully, cautiously, he opened it again, slowly, so slowly that he could get a glimpse of every angle the mirror would be in.

At some point, two faces smiled at him.

Rose and Andie.

Damon hoped they'd get along. Surely they would. After all, they had put up with him.

The vampire closed the pocket mirror before they could see the tear falling down his left cheek. He knew he had a speck of dust in his eye, but they wouldn't believe him. Frankly, he himself didn't believe him. A speck of dust his ass.

A speck of dust it would be.

Damon cleaned the tv studio, picked up Andie's belongings, and went back to the boarding house. There, he saw Elena, who was angrily waving some photograph at him, but he told her to shut up after a while and walked away. He had a pretty good idea of where the picture came from, but wasn't inclined to comfort the young woman now that he had told her it wasn't about Klaus' murders, but her beloved's. After all Stefan had done this very evening, he wasn't in any mood to listen to the list of all the things Klaus would have to pay for once she'd have her boyfriend back.

The vampire knew there was no hope for the current, ripper Stefan. Not for now, at least.

So he went upstairs, let Andie's things in a cupboard, but kept the pocket mirror with him.

When he saw Ric sleeping peacefully, he smiled a bit more and put the mirror on his bedside table.

It was time to sleep. So he did.

Alaric said nothing, didn't open his eyes when his boyfriend came in. But he knew.

Rose and Andie were talking, watching over the two men from the mirror hanging on the back wall of the bedroom. Of course, they could be seen only from a certain angle, and no one could hear them.

 


	14. Your cousin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Add some days, a week maybe, between 3x01 and 3x02, and there is this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I like to imagine gruesome murders...  
> No, I don't. But i do it nonetheless, and I guess this is the best way to get them out of my head. And frankly, it could be worst.

When Andie Star was reported missing the next day, Alaric turned off the tv and looked at Damon who only shook his head. They talked about it a bit, and the hunter took a look at the mirror.

Days passed.

Somehow, Theodoric behaved, even if his cousin was less than pleased each time they met at the Mystic Grill or somewhere else in town. He was either drinking a beer, or hanging out with the oldest students who were all curious over his eyepatch. The girls seemed to think he was really gorgeous, and mysterious, and rich, and, in a word, totally to their liking. Sometimes, Damon had the feeling he was looking at himself.

Elena was being difficult about Stefan, searching for him in every way she could think of. Damon had to warn Elizabeth Forbes not to tell the doppelganger anything unless she wanted the girl dead, and the vampire and Ric had been forced to move their notes in the teacher's now unused loft.

But all in all, life was going on.

Alaric should have known it couldn't possibly continue this way for long.

One night he woke up on the Gilberts' couch to find a memo on the coffee table. He still couldn't bring himself to sleep in either Jenna's or the parents' room.

The hunter reached for the memo, thinking it was surely something he had forgotten to put away the day before, a note about his next class, or an appointment with some student's parents.

But it wasn't.

This was definitely not his handwriting.

Ric froze when he realized that the only two persons who were likely able to sneak upon him during his sleep were Damon... and Theo. Damon, because he was used to his presence, and because the vampire could be damn quiet when he wanted to, and Theodoric because he was a Saltzman too. A locked door wasn't going to stop him if he wanted to come in.

And this was definitely not Damon's handwriting.

Alaric rushed upstairs, and was relieved to see Jeremy and Elena asleep and alive. He knew he wouldn't have stayed asleep himself if anything had happened during the night, but he couldn't help the fear that had rushed to his head when he had realized his cousin had been in the house, and he wouldn't have known if not for the memo.

He closed the two doors of the youngsters' rooms quietly, and went back in the sitting room. There, he took the time to actually read the memo. His face darkened as he did so.

_Some guy I have never met before tried to hurt me yesterday evening. Something about giving back his girl. As you can guess, he didn't_ _even_ _get to hurt me a little. At first, I was a bit worried and didn't know what to do. But you know what, cousin? Turns out the guy had a drinking problem. Why not use him to deepen the Sobriety Merchant's fame? Since, after all, he had to die anyway._

_P.S.: you'll find him behind the grocery store._

_Your cousin._

Alaric almost choked when he finished reading.

What the hell was wrong with Theodoric? Aside from being a Falkenback, aside from having some issues with his seal, this was pure madness. No Satzman was supposed to act like that, so reckless, completely out of any boundary, and that rule was not only to protect himself, but also the whole family!

But Theo had lost most of his feelings when he hadn't been sealed in time.

The hunter sneered blankly. So much for Landyn and her delusions about keeping the young man under surveillance.

Well. Maybe it was because of him. In a way. Not much. But still a little bit. He had piqued the interest and the curiosity of his cousin by antagonizing him instead of staying silent despise the man's black deeds, and now he reaped what he had sown.

So he'd need to deal with the inhumane human being that was supposed to be his cousin. Supposed, because Alaric wasn't willing to recognize they were of the same blood. If anything, he'd rather admit being part of the Saltzman Family over not admitting it and still considering Theo his cousin as an individual.

One last warning.

One last warning, and after that he'd take Theodoric down. No matter what he'd have to do for that to happen. He had been lenient enough until now, but this couldn't continue anymore.

So the hunter hid a knife in his left shirtsleeve, and two syringes filled with sedatives in his right one, and he was on his way.

When he arrived at the still closed grocery store, he felt relieved the carnage had yet to be found. No one needed to see this, and not having the police to deal with was good. He went behind the building, and sighed the Sobriety Merchant's masterwork.

It was disgusting.

The dead body was hardly recognizable. Once killed, Theodoric had made sure his face had been disfigured with the shards of a glass bottle. The body was positioned as if the man had passed out drinking against the nearest wall, and three empty bottles of wine had been displayed near his head. Another one, now marred with blood, had been broken and pushed into the poor guy's stomach. Finally, Theodoric had thought it funny, when he had created the Sobriety Merchant, that the fictional serial killer was to break another bottle and put it on his victim's head as if it was a hat.

Alaric didn't need to look, and he certainly didn't want to, but he knew his cousin had stuffed the man's throat with smashed glass.

And he also knew Theo was here, not far, and watched him with a sickening smile. There was no point in doing this if he didn't get to see the hunter's anger.

So he walked away, sat down on a bench, and waited.

Theodoric came to him on his own after one minute only. Ric greeted him as if nothing wrong was going on, and didn't bother to look at his cousin after that. Theo did the same. They stayed this way for a while, staring in opposing directions.

“Landyn won't like this stunt.”

Theodoric snorted in disdain. What did he care about their aunt's opinion?

“More like you don't like it, not her.”

“I don't like that you come and mess with my life.”

“Try and stop me, then. Oh, I forgot, you didn't do it back then, and you won't do it now.”

Alaric would have arched an eyebrow, if he hadn't wanted to keep any hint of what he was going to do to himself. Instead, he threw his left arm to his cousin's face, releasing the knife at the same time. Left or right, he didn't care much. A Saltzman was born almost ambidextrous, and little training was needed to really become it.

Of course, Theo was expecting something of the sort. The man grabbed Ric's arm and twisted it in a way that the hunter could only let go of the blade.

“I'm ashamed for you, Alaric, if that's all you can do. Where does your confidence that you can beat me anytime come from? Or have you gone soft since you left, hum?”

The younger man almost sniggered as he finished his sentence, looking at his cousin's angry face.

He should have known better.

Theodoric felt dizzy all of a sudden, and looked at the now smiling Alaric. It was a cold smile, very, very cold, very ominous, too. Three seconds later, he was falling on the ground.

Alaric took out the syringes from his cousin's side. He had thought it better to knock out Theo for as long as he could, and he knew two syringes of sedatives weren't going to be the end of a Saltzman. On top of being highly skilled in combat and assassination, the Falkenbachs were hard to kill.

Ric looked at the still form and sighed.

“I'm ashamed for you, Theodoric, if that's all you expected from me.”

The hunter dragged his cousin to his car, and transported him into his apartment. Once there, he roughly tied up the man to a chair and called the police with a cellphone he had bought under an alias. He tipped them off on the slaughter scene they'd find behind the town's grocery store and hung up as soon as he could. Then he called Damon, asking him to get his ass over here quickly.

Then he went back to restraining Theodoric. He had promised the man a last warning, and the man would get it. By being tied to a chair in his cousin's apartment for one or two days if needed.

Thirty minutes later, Damon knocked on the door and Ric told him to come in.

“What, you won't open your door to greet your estimed guest anymore?”

The hunter rolled his eyes.

“I'm kind of busy right now, convincing my cousin not to kill anyone else before lunchtime.”

Damon looked at the said cousin and noticed the man was dozing with a lot of ropes and chains restraining his body. If that was what Alaric considered “convincing”, the vampire hoped he'd never need to be convinced. Although, if the “convincing” involved a bed and sexual activities, he could very well reconsider.

Still, there was something wrong with the scene he had before his eyes.

“What the hell... wait, anyone else?”

Ric nodded, stern-face on.

“Liz and the deputies must be busy at the crime scene by now. So I'm teaching him a lesson. Can you hand me his jacket, please? I'd like to see if there is any hint about what else he planned to do.”

Damon blinked once or twice, but did as he was told. The Saltzmans were an odd bunch, he knew that already, but well, he was a vampire so he had nothing to say. Though he suspected this Theodoric fellow was a whole new thing to deal with.

The hunter went through the jacket pockets, and as he did this, he found two switchblades, one of them with dried blood on it. He frowned, seemingly disapproving of his cousin's lack of professionalism. Then he found a flyer about an exhibition not far away from Mystic Falls about World War II with the words “For Ric” written on it. He stared at it for a minute, then stared at his sleeping cousin in obvious disbelief, then rubbed his temples and sat on his bed.

After a minute he looked at his boyfriend and asked if the vampire would come with him. Damon smirked as the history lover was making himself known in Alaric and said, with a hint of mockery, that it would be an honor.

They ate breakfast together, keeping a wary eye on their tied guest, then left for their improvised date. Alaric made sure to lock the apartment's door and windows, yet he clearly believed that if Theodoric managed to get rid of the ropes and chaines and handcuffs and adhesive tape, he'd succeed in getting out of the loft too.

On their way out of Mystic Falls, they drove near the grocery store, and Damon stared in disbelief at what was a real investigation in the vampires infested city that usually hid the bodies from the public. He saw Liz Forbes looking utterly sick at the sight of Theo's murder and wondered what else the man had come up with after Mobile Maker.

They spent a pleasant day out of Mystic Falls, ending it with the exhibition. Everything was perfect, Damon laughed at some “beliefs” of the modern historians, and Alaric asked him what he knew of the truth with the genuine interest of a history teacher.

But at some point of the tour, Ric froze and stared intently at a picture of nazi officers. Damon, intrigued, took a closer look at the photograph, and was surprised to see a man who resembled someone he knew... Who exactly, he had no id... Well, no, the man looked a lot like Alaric.

“You.. look quite alike.”

The hunter responded in an angry voice.

“I know. Genetics seems to love to mock me. You'd think that after two centuries of separation, our families would never have anything in common physically speaking, but here I am, with the almost same face as a nazi executioner.”

Damon could understand that he didn't like that at all. He looked at the caption: Werner Falkenbach.

“You're from the same family?”

“Hildegard Falkenbach eloped with Karl Saltzman to America without telling anyone in 1755.”

“And that's why the Falkenbach Curse is considered extinct...”

Ric said nothing on the way back. Damon followed him to his loft, where Theodoric was waiting for them, humming, still tied to his chair. His cousin waved the flyer before the man's eyes.

“You did it on purpose, didn't you?! You knew he would be on the pictures!”

Theo smirked at Alaric's anger.

“You're still playing the good man, but you are no better than the rest of us, Alaric. Saltzman is the name of a blood stained family, whether you like it or not.”

The hunter slammed the door, leaving his cousin confined in his apartment.

 


	15. So derogatory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x02

When the morning sun woke Alaric up the day after the exhibition fiasco, he found himself to be sleeping next to Damon, in the vampire's bedroom. Both of them were clothed, and he had no recollection of the evening. The fourteen bottles of various alcohol lying around the room surely had something to do with that, he mused.

Ric made a quick trip to the bathroom, and began to puke his guts out. He hadn't had so much to drink in a long time, since Damon and his getting together, he believed. They had gone out for a bourbon occasionally, but they had almost lost their drinking habit, too happy to bother with alcohol.

When he came back in the room, showered and clean shaven, his vampire of a boyfriend was sitting on the bed, sipping a blood bag with a smirk.

“Good morning?”

“Shut up. You don't have to deal with the hangover, so you don't get to comment.”

The hunter soon left the boarding house and went back to the Gilberts', where he was welcomed and attacked at the same time by a very hyper Elena.

It took him some time to understand that she wanted to go to the Smoky Mountains since she knew Stefan was there hunting down werewolves with Klaus.

“Wait a minute, how do you even know that?”

The young woman looked at him fiercely, as if to dare him to try and persuade her, as Damon had done, to give up. Ric only looked away, still unable to focus on anything in particular.

“The sheriff told me yesterday a bit after noon. She seemed distressed, with the murder and all. Wait a minute, it's not Damon, at least? Because if he's the culprit, I don't see why he thinks he can lecture me about Stefan, because he's definitely worst. At least Andie didn't suffer before dying. And she's not even dead.”

Alaric nearly snarled at that. What did the girl know, really? From what Damon had told him, the woman had been scared almost to death before being ordered to let herself fall. And if Andie hadn't died, she was still stuck in a pocket mirror, as was Rose-Marie, and that wasn't thanks to Stefan.

The teacher could understand that Elena was being restless, and didn't really mean it. He knew Damon hadn't the cleanest record in the good guys history too. That didn't mean he liked to hear her being so derogatory.

“I know for fact it's not Damon who did it. And, what do you think you're doing, going after werewolves on a full moon, exactly?”

“Searching for Stefan. He'll be there, and I'll get him away from Klaus. After that, we'll come back.”

Ric frowned. First things first, how did she think she'd get past Klaus in the first place? And also, who said the vampire would come with her? He had a deal to honor, and breaking his part would only make everyone he cared for a target for Klaus' revenge. And one last thing...

“We?”

Elena looked at him with a calculating gaze, went upstairs and came back with some aspirin.

“Well, I'm not going to go there alone, am I? As you pointed out, there are werewolves and it's almost the full moon. You're welcome to accompany me.”

Alaric took and swallowed a tablet, secretly hoping the young woman would disappear from his sight after he'd have taken the medicine. Who knew, maybe she was only a manifestation of his hangover.

Unfortunately, she wasn't.

He eventually grunted his agreement, and as he went upstairs to wash his face and look a bit more like a respectable human being, he phoned Damon to ask him to tag along. He could still hear his boyfriend's exasperated tone and promise to be at the Gilberts' as soon as possible when he joined Elena's trip preparations. If he had to gain more time, he could as well make it useful. And he certainly wasn't going to let the girl near anything with fur, fangs, and claws without a handy of wolsbane grenades.

As for himself, he still had the knife from the night before. He'd do with this much, not really willing to talk about his family curse to the young woman.

Elena sighed as she put her bag on her shoulders.

“I was going to go and ask you to come anyway. Since you weren't in the house, I had planned to pass by your loft, but now it's not necessary anymore. Unless you want to grab something there before leaving?”

Alaric's heart missed a beat as the young woman said those words. He was quickly remembered of his tied up guest. He didn't know, for now, if Theo had escaped during the night, or if he was still in his apartment. He had been lucky he had arrived to the Gilberts' before she went there. Ric hadn't the slightest idea of what Theodoric could have done to the girl if she had gone and had found his cousin instead of him in the apartment. And he didn't, but really didn't, want to know that anytime soon.

“I've got everything I need, thanks.”

“Well, then, shall we?”

The teacher winced behind her back, and they left the house. Damon was casually leaning against Ric's car, and smirked when he saw the unhappy look on Elena's face. He bowed ridiculously low and asked if her majesty would get in the car, and if the regent would take the passenger front seat. Ric ignored him but decided it would indeed be for the best if the vampire was to drive. He still had a headache.

He surely fell asleep at some point of their trip, even if when he opened his eyes on the Smoky Mountains he didn't remember having closed them. Nonetheless, he felt slightly better, even though they were going to walk right into a forest that would soon be infested with werewolves.

Damon shooed away his concern for him, saying that yes, vampires were the werewolves' favorite treat, but him, at least, he could run away at high speed. After that, the vampire glared at Elena, obviously meaning that she had no idea about how dangerously stupid and useless her idea was.

The young woman only shrugged, not a bit interested with his opinion.

Damon and Alaric shared a look, wondering how stuborn the girl could be.

At some point Damon pushed her in a river. Ric watched their antics for a while before remembering them that not only they weren't here for fun, but they also had a very important curfew to observe. After all, those who didn't observe the curfew were likely to be torn into pieces by supernatural wolves.

Later, they encountered someone that was more close to a something. The someone / something tried to kill Damon, so obviously Alaric walked in and, to Elena's great surprise, strangled the someone / something into unconsciousness. The girl looked oddly at the hunter as he didn't struggle so much while the someone / something was struggling to get free. She almost forgot to hand him the vervain darts when he asked her, too surprised for her own good.

“Elena. The darts. Please.”

The young woman blinked, and finally stung the someone / something with the vervain, hoping it'd slow him down if he were to wake up any time soon.

Ric took a deep breath, let go of his prisoner, and felt he'd have muscle cramps the day after.

“I don't know what he is, but this guy is strong.”

Damon kicked said guy, and immediately rued his action. Said guy opened his eyes, jumped at his throat, and backed off only because of the wolfsbane grenade Damon had shoved in his face. The vampire thanked Elena for tossing it to him, and they tried to tie the someone / something to a tree with vervain soaked ropes and chains.

The someone / something was most likely a hybrid, and from the look of it, Damon mused with amusement that Klaus' experiments weren't going so well. The hybrid the Original had tried to create was weeping blood, and if he was definitely more dangerous than a normal werewolf or vampire, he was also seemingly rabid.

“You're alright, Damon?”

The vampire reassured his boyfriend that he hadn't been bitten anywhere, and rolled his eyes. He would have asked what the hunter could say about the hybrid's strength, but Elena was here too, and none of the two lovers wanted her to know of Alaric's condition.

“What about you?”

“Took him by surprise, I guess. He didn't hurt me, if that's what you're worried about.”

The vampire sneered at that, not convinced at all. He was about to say something mean when they heard the not-so-unconscious-but-very-determined-to-off-them-all hybrid growling.

Alaric, Elena and Damon looked at each other, looked at the sun still visible in the sky, and looked at the transforming hybrid growling at them. They all decided it was better to run away.

They were running as fast as they could when Elena tripped and fell on the ground.

A wolf that was very likely to be the werewolf form of the hybrid stopped dead in his tracks and snarled at her nastily.

Ric took half a second to think, and walked between the two. The wolf snarled louder, as if he knew the man was more dangerous than any man would ever be. The hunter only glared at him. Surely, the wolf knew. There was no question about him knowing or not knowing.

It was all about who would move first.

In a fair fight of strength and skills, Alaric knew he had no chance of winning. The werewolf was only a wolf, so skills were not important in this case, but he was every inch of a supernatural wolf with tremendous strength and fangs and claws. Alaric wasn't armed or prepared for that right now.

But if the wolf moved first, he could strike back. If Ric moved first... he was doomed.

“Elena, you run as fast as you can.”

“But...”

“I'll be just behind you. But for us to survive, you need to go and not to look behind, no matter what.”

The girl reluctantly left, and the wolf moved. The hunter stabbed him in the stomach, not that it did much good with his regenerative abilities, and shouted at Damon to lure the hybrid away. As soon as the vampire started running, Ric took back his knife and did just the same.

The wolf hesitated one second but eventually went after the vampire.

When Alaric reached the car, Elena was already inside. She watched him oddly as he got in. Then she complained about leaving Damon behind to lure the hybrif away. Ric cringed but told her they didn't really have a choice. Of course, a werewolf's, and therefore a hybrid's, bite was lethal to a vampire, and Damon was a vampire, but being ripped into pieces by the hybrid was as lethal and would have likely been their fate if Damon hadn't distracted the monster.

Then Elena started to talk about things Ric didn't listen to, too worried about his boyfriend not coming back. When she put a Gilbert ring in his hand, though, he started to listen. The hunter had to give it to her, she was stuborn, and she cared about him.

And, well, a ring that protected him from supernatural deaths could come in handy if any of his inner feelings about Klaus were to be proven right. So Alaric put it back on his finger, remembering how John Gilbert had asked for it and how he had given it to him with a light chuckle. He really had been angry at the time, and had frightened the man more than he deserved to be.

There was a time of silence while Elena looked at him with squinted eyes.

Finally, she spoke.

“Caroline told me something strange a few days ago.”

Ric's upper lip twitched.

“Really, and what was it?”

Elena's voice was accusatory, with a hint of mischief in it.

The hunter wished Damon and him had silenced the blond vampire when they had had the chance.

“She asked me if I'd mind that one of our high school teachers was dating a vampire. And I know for sure she wasn't talking about herself, because she's definitely going after Tyler.”

Alaric said nothing.

Elena gave him a pointed look.

“She said that?”

Another pointed look.

“Fine. Damon and I are going out.”

Elena was gobsmacked. She didn't know what she had expected, but that wasn't it. She had thought so, right, Damon and Alaric... but she had believed Caroline had been jocking.

Damon opened the passenger door and they left the Smoky Mountains in silence.


	16. The Falkenbachs and the cutlery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A regular evening at the Mystic Grill. Regular. Mystic Grill. Regular evening.  
> Oh well. Don't worry, nobody dies.  
> For now.

When Damon walked in the Mystic Grill, the day after the trip to the Smoky Mountains, Alaric was already drinking at the bar counter. The vampire joined him and asked for a bourbon, as usual.

“Hey. Fancy seeing you here.”

The hunter gave him a doubtful look.

“You're short of pick up lines or what?”

“Or what.”

“I see... Small talk put aside, anything worthy of my interest?”

Damon shrugged. For now, Mystic Falls was quiet.

For now.

Ric took a sip of alcohol, and eyed two mens wearing black suits who were precisely doing the same thing, observing the customers. Intrigued, Damon followed his gaze, and frowned at the two very FBI-cliché men.

“Are they real?”

Alaric gave him a jaded look. Decidedly, his boyfriend was giving him many looks lately.

“No, they're porcelain dolls.”

“Alright, I get it. You're trying to be an ass.”

“Not trying. Succeeding.”

“Whatever.”

Alaric took another sip of bourbon, sighed, kept his eyes closed for almost one minute, opened them and went back to staring at the two FBI agents. The Falkenbach in him was surely taking a nap, Damon mused, because there was no way he could have been more obvious.

“Ric, talk to me, I know you're brooding about something right now. My brother is the brooding king, I know what I'm talking about. So talk.”

The hunter asked for a second drink, and his gaze went over every customer in the damn place. Now that the vampire thought about it, it was a bit like he was searching for someone.

Ric sighed once again, and Damon seriously thought of strangling him with the bartender's tea towel. After all, now, he could. Alaric had the Gilbert ring. Well, there was still the issue of the witnesses and the sheriff deputy that had just left the Grill's bathroom and the two FBI agents eating their meal only two meters away.

“I was thinking...”

“I had guessed that much.”

A discreet punch on the leg made the vampire's smug smile disappear. Damon decided to listen. He had asked for it, after all.

“As I was saying before you interrupted me, I was wondering where the hell Gal is. Elena told me she was still in town, and I looked for her to help and deal with the Theodoric problem, but she's nowhere to be found. Now, we have the two clowns on the lookout, and I'm sure Theo won't take much longer to break free. We're having enough supernatural problems without adding up some serial killer issues.”

The vampire nodded, thoughtful, and looked quickly at the two agents. He had forgotten how the FBI sometimes looked into the serial killers cases. Since Ric's cousin had certainly used the Sobriety Merchant's modus operandi in many states, and maybe even in other countries, it made sense for the black suits to be here.

“So you're planning to ask your vampire ancestor to help you with your cursed hitman of a cousin?”

“More or less.”

“Not a bad idea. But I'm sorry, I don't have the slightest idea where she is. Last time I saw her, she was telling me how I should go after you for both our sakes.”

Alaric arched an eyebrow at the comment, a bit surprised by Galswinthe's actions, but eventually stayed silent and looked away. Curious, Damon took another look at the FBI agents, and quickly understood they weren't the cause of Ric's behavior.

Theodoric had just came in, and was walking towards them with an unpleasant smile on his face. Two young women started to giggle as he passed by their table. The young man cast a sidelong glance at the two men, who squinted their eyes when they saw him. They had that look, that they thought they had already seen him before, but couldn't remember when or where.

Ric's cousin took a seat right next to his relative, and asked for a beer.

Damon groaned in dissatisfaction.

The younger Saltzman looked at him curiously, but the vampire waved his hand.

“Don't mind me. I know everything about you little family secret, and Ric is not in jail, so you really can talk about any murderous feelings without fear.”

The hunter glared at his boyfriend, as he could say as much about the vampire. Even if sending Damon to jail wouldn't do any good, with the compulsion and everything. Then he glared at his cousin, still angry with the trick Theo had played on him two days before.

Theodoric shrugged, and drank some of his beer.

“Landyn wouldn't approve of anyone knowing, Alaric.”

The hunter's glare became murderous.

“Says the one who brought the police on our trail with his hobbies. Besides, you brought the FBI with you in my town, so I don't give a fuck about what you think. As for Landyn, she has things more important to do than to silence Damon. And even if she tried...”

Damon grinned at the suspicious Falkenbach sitting next to his favorite Falkenbach.

“You Saltzmans aren't the only ones with dirty little secrets. I know yours, Ric knows mine. And be careful, he's feeling grumpy today.”

Alaric punched the vampire, in the guts this time, as discreetly as he could. Damon still growled, for the punch hadn't been light. Granted, the hunter was a bit more than grumpy.

“Aside from that, your two days off were enjoyable?”

Theodoric squinted his eyes, realizing the black haired man sitting next to his cousin knew about his... forced leave. He wondered if that meant he also knew about the reason behind the forced leave. As Ric had mentioned the FBI not long before, he mused that yes, the man called Damon knew about the murder. He remembered how Damon had been with Alaric when he had greeted his cousin at the party the other day. There was something he didn't know, and Theo didn't like that.

He cast a glace at his cousin, only to meet an angry glare.

“If only it could have taught him a lesson...”

“It did. I now know how to undo a knot with my hand tied and an oyster knife.”

Alaric rolled his eyes, not bothering anymore with the intended thickness Theo was displaying.

“I don't know about you, Damon, but I'm leaving. There are people I can't bear in this bar.”

“Coming.”

The vampire gulped the last of his bourbon and made a move to leave and follow his boyfriend. He couldn't say he liked Ric's cousin, to say the least. Once again, the young man was too much like the bastard / switched-off version of himself.

But as he stood up, Damon's eyes fell on the back of a man he didn't know, who wasn't from Mystic Falls, and who had the Falkenbach scar on his left shoulder. He instantly stopped dead in his tracks, and searched for Alaric's eyes.

The hunter met his gaze and looked discreetly at the man as this one was sitting down on a bar stool.

Of course, Theodoric did exactly the same, and the three adults found themselves staring dumbfounded at an unknown man's shoulder. Neither Ric nor Theo had the slightest idea who he was, it was written all over their face, and yet what were the odds someone who wasn't a Saltzman had this particular scar?

After a while they sat back at the bar counter, as everyone else in the Grill was looking at them curiously. Amongst the spectators of this strange scene were the two FBI agents. It was definitely not the time to attract their attention. The only one who hadn't turned his head to look at them was the stranger himself.

He was dressed in a sporty fashion, track pants and sleeveless shirt, the reason why they had been able to see the scar. Medium length black hair, styled backwards, and cold grey eyes. A jaw that was much like Alaric's and his father's, lots of eyelashes as Theo, dimpled chin. A gaze to freeze the Arctic Ocean.

The man finished his whiskey and finally looked at them.

“Do I know you? You seem oddly familiar.”

Damon watched the conversation cautiously, ready to act if he needed to, though he had no idea what to do if anything happened, because he had not the slightest clue about what the stranger could do. This man was utterly unreadable as if... as a Falkenbach. Right.

Theodoric spoke first, after having exchanged a wary look with his cousin. For once, they agreed about something, mused Damon. He had to remind his boyfriend of this one day, he simply had to.

“I fear not. But since you're asking... your scar is quite interesting. You did it yourself?”

“Oh, no. My father did. Family tradition.”

“Strange... I'm sure I saw one just like yours, and the guy said the exact same thing.”

The man suddenly tensed, and eyed the two cousins with attention. Behind them, Damon shook his head, indicating clearly that he had nothing to do with this... and also that he knew there was a hidden question behind the intensive examination.

The bartender came to them asking if they wanted anything else. The man turned his head to the teenager, surely working here for the holidays, and looked him in the eyes.

“You never noticed us. Go back to the other customers.”

And surprisingly, the teenager complied, frowning as if he had forgotten why he had come to this part of the counter, when there was obviously no customer to serve here.

Theodoric was bemused at what he had just seen. Alaric and Damon, not so much. They shared a concerned look, and the hunter carefully asked if the stranger was perhaps looking for a person named Klaus.

The man's gaze became even colder than before, murderous, and definitely not pleasant.

“Theo, you leave now.”

Alaric's voice had disturbed a nasty silence, and an even more perplexed than before Theodoric. The hunter's eyes had gone cold, deadly and menacing as well. The stranger watched Ric with renewed interest as the older of the two cousins was taking the lead.

Of course, the youngest didn't take it well, and started arguing, but eventually Damon compelled him to leave, barely avoiding a fork aimed at his left hand. What was the thing between the Falkenbachs and the cutlery, he didn't know, but he had a feeling even a spoon was a deadly weapon if put in their hands.

Once Theo had unwillingly-but-forced-to-comply left the Mystic Grill, the unknown man, who wasn't so unknown if Ric's hunch was right, watched the cursed man and the vampire in front of him with curiosity and animosity. They had talked about Klaus, after all.

“A vampire, and one of my descendant, I take it? What's your name, by the way?”

As Ric stayed stubbornly silent, his boyfriend rolled his eyes and took it upon himself to make introductions.

“Damon Salvatore. The merry man over there is Alaric Saltzman, and the youngster who just left is his cousin, Theodoric Saltzman. Are we wrong to guess your name is Hans Falkenbach?”

The man, or more accurately, the vampire, seemed to relax a bit, and Damon thought it was for the better if they could talk to him without using any kind of violence. Hans Falkenbach was way older, hence stronger, than him, and he was a freaking Falkenbach. Galswinthe had told the younger vampire that even Klaus feared her husband, and it was obvious why. Even though Hans wouldn't be able to kill the Original... Well, he could do much more than any regular vampire.

The vampire was a freaking Falkenbach.

That thought only was enough to give Damon the chills.

And an appropriate desire to run away, very, very fast.

Hans nodded. He was that person.

“Now, from what I know, Klaus was here not long ago. As I swore I'd make his life a living hell, would you be so kind as to tell me where I can find him?”

Alaric winced at the name of the Original, and pure loathing pervaded his usually controlled face. If the man and his ancestor had anything in common, beside the jaw, obviously, it was their hatred for Klaus, a vampire who had the disturbing habit of destroying other people's lives.

 


	17. Death, betrayal, and solitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Someone stopped commenting, and now I can't find the desire to write this anymore. I'm sad. It's all your fault.  
> This story is now discontinued.
> 
> And that was a joke.  
> Seriously, though, last week I was being lazy, and this week I didn't have access to the Internet.

Without warning, Alaric's glass broke in his hand. Damon thought it'd be best if the hunter could control his strength, for it was already the second time it happened. Though he could understand that the mention of Klaus, the Original Bastard, would anger his boyfriend. He was even surprised anything of the sort hadn't happened sooner.

The vampire sighed, looked around in search of prying eyes, and was highly displeased to see that they had gotten the attention of the two agents. As if they hadn't enough problems without them.

“If you don't mind, it'd be better if we leave.”

Hans was a bit reluctant, but he followed them outside nonetheless. Whether it was out of good will or because it'd be easier to ask for information if he didn't do something unadvised, Damon had no idea. But at least, they were outside. If the Falkenbach vampire was still on a repressed rampage, he'd have less potential victims outside the Mystic Grill than inside.

Or Damon hoped so. After all, a group of teenagers could very well be dumb enough to leave the Grill just when there was an unstable vampire killing machine ready to do anything to get Klaus' location. And that's exactly what they did. Granted, they didn't know about the unstable-vampire-killing-machine-ready-to-do-anything-to-get-Klaus'-location bit, so they couldn't be called dumb. Unlucky was more like it.

Watching out for the bunch of high schoolers, and since when was Damon Salvatore the thoughtful one?, the vampire led the two Falkenbachs away from the Grill's front door. No precaution was unnecessary right now.

“Right, so, Klaus.”

Alaric's teeth gnashed once more, while Hans' features became even more full of hate.

Damon ignored them, wondering how in hell he was to avoid a killing spree. The fact that Hans had been desiccating for years thanks to the Original Bastard and one of his brothers, if what Gal had told him was right, couldn't be good. If Damon had been left to desiccate for so long, and several times at that, he'd be out for blood. So it was totally understandable, if Hans Falkenbach wanted to take a few lives out of anger, and, presumably, out of madness.

It being understandable didn't make the thing more acceptable. The ones who would perish under the older vampire's hand and, quite possibly, teeth, surely wouldn't be happy with dying. The fact that Hans was more than likely half-crazy wasn't reassuring, at all. The vampire was something like the epitome of dangerous, in the same league as the Original Bastard and his Original siblings, and that when he wasn't even almost immortal like the Originals Douchebags.

And Damon wouldn't put it past him to kill even his own blood, that is, Ric, in a fit of rage.

That was crazyness for you.

“First of all, we don't have any idea where the Original Bastard currently is; and believe me when I say that we'd want to know, since he kind of enslaved my little brother three months ago. All I can say, is, East Coast. Also, we're not trying to delay you in any way. Klaus got many people we cared about killed, including Ric's girlfriend, and he's still a threat for some of us. Last thing but not least, you might want to know that he finally broke the curse.”

Hans had become more and more cold as Damon had said his tirade, but at the last sentence, the older vampire froze, looking more thoughtful than menacing all of a sudden.

“You're saying that Klaus is finally a hybrid?”

The younger vampire nodded, keeping an eye on his boyfriend who still had to talk. Alaric looked pale beyond what was humanly possible, but he seemed to have calmed down a bit.

Hans sighed loudly, and let himself rest against the closest wall. He almost seemed happy.

“So he killed the Petrova Doppelganger... and now, he's the only one of his kind.”

No, Damon corrected his thoughts. The older Falkenbach didn't look happy. He looked thrilled.

Why, the younger vampire had no idea.

“Excuse me, but why is it so important?”

Ric's voice startled his boyfriend.

Hans looked at his umpteenth time grandson, a delighted smile on his lips. It was as if he had finally gotten something he had waited for for centuries. As if there couldn't be a better gift than to know that Klaus was the only hybrid ever, despite the fact that he was even more unkillable now, and twice as deadly.

If it was such great news, such a sweet revenge on the Original Hybrid, Alaric wanted to know why, and, if possible, to be delighted as well. He had too much to blame Klaus for, even the slightest hint of revenge would be great.

His ancestor's eyes locked on his own, and the man was surprised to find this much hatred in the vampire's eyes. But it was only normal. After all, the Falkenbach had had centuries to nurture his anger towards Klaus.

“The thing is, there are three things only that Klaus fears: death, betrayal, and solitude. Now, death is still within our grasp, though it has only become more difficult to kill him. Becoming a hybrid, for him, was a way to keep death as far away as he could. But it wasn't the only goal. Klaus is terrified by betrayal, always fearing that his siblings will abandon him, and so he is unsufferable and not willing to allow them any freedom, thus causing them to dislike him and abandon him. It's pretty ironic, actually, and he can't even see that. Being a hybrid, the one and only Original Hybrid, is a way for him to gain servants more loyal than any vampire could be, because if Klaus manage to freed other werewolves from the grip of the moon, they would surely become so grateful that a sire bond will be created. Now, the only thing left, solitude...”

The older vampire smiled, and this smile gave the younger vampire chills so cold and marked that Damon felt like his skin was trying to get the hell out of here without him. Last time he had seen this kind of heartless, humanity-deprived smile, it was on a Saltzman. He wasn't sure whether it had been Ric or Theo, but it was definitely a Saltzman.

Even a switched-off vampire couldn't equal this level of inhumanity. With a switched-off vampire, there was humanity, somewhere deep in their heart, not much, but there was some. They showed the obnoxious, greedy, hateful side of humanity. But it was still humanity.

A Falkenbach, a Saltzman, couldn't switch on and off. It simply wasn't there, as Alaric had told him one day. No guilt, no sick pleasure, nothing behind the kill, behind the smile. They could hurt, torture someone... and they were still empty.

But because they were human, though cursed, their mind reminded them that it wasn't right. The part of their heart that knew what a feeling was like sent it to the mind. Of course, it could only be bycold and heartless, awfully logical means; but it was better than nothing.

Hans Falkenbach wasn't human. He was a vampire.

A mad, bloodthirsty in the most literal way, not bothered by human ethics, vampire, who, because he was a Falkenbach, hadn't any feelings to oppose the lack of ethics.

Why the freaking hell Klaus had made this guy an ennemy, Damon had no idea. What he knew, was that he himself would never have made this mistake. He didn't have a death wish, after all.

Hans, even though he had freaked the hell out of Damon, hadn't finished.

“Solitude. Something any almost immortal being can rightfully fear. Something that Klaus, because he has such a temper that no one wants to stick with him for long, fears more than death and betrayal. His family has been at a breaking point for centuries, and last time I was around, Elijah had finally decided it was too much, while their two brothers and their sister had been dealed with by Klaus. The Original Hybrid is as alone as one can be, even if he sometimes takes a liking to some vampire, witch or even werewolf. If he can make others like him, though, and if they are, as he believes they will be, sired to him, Klaus will never ever be alone anymore. He won't be the one and only hybrid out there, and the others will never leave him unless they are killed.”

Damon glanced at Ric, wondering what the hunter thought of all that, and not exactly sure of what to think of it himself, but his boyfriend had his poker-face on.

“The thing is, the witch who cursed him put a security measure on the curse. Hybrids such as Klaus are beings that shall never be according to the balance of nature. Yet, Klaus is. Now that he has unleashed his werewolf side with the ritual, the only way for him to make other hybrids would be by feeding his blood to werewolves, killing them, then feeding them the doppelganger's blood to finish the transition. And since he had to kill the Petrova doppelganger in order to finish the ritual...”

And the older vampire laughed a cold and heartless smile.

Klaus had destroyed his only hope to ever get what he wanted.

The thing was, Damon thought while doing his best not to exchange a panicked look with Ric, that Elena was alive thanks to John's sacrifice. If Klaus discovered this little secret...

As for him, Alaric wasn't pleased at all.

If he hadn't known Elena, if he hadn't known she was alive, he'd have been despicably happy at the piece of news. But the girl was alive, and certainly bound to be sought after by the Original Bastard if what his ancestor was saying was true.

Yes, the hunter could go and finish what Klaus had started by killing Elena, but he was sure the human part of his soul wouldn't have liked that at all.

“Does Klaus know about the security measure?”

Certainly not, or he wouldn't have tried to turn the pack in the Smoky Mountains. But since Hans knew, it couldn't hurt to be sure.

The vampire waved the question away.

“He doesn't. Even if I had wanted to tell him, he wouldn't have believed me. And even if he knew, it's not like the girl is alive anymore, is it? He'll have to wait for the next doppelganger, to whom I'll happily spare the life of a blood bag as soon as I'll find her, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one. He and his brother took away my reason for living, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same to them.”

Ric, poker-face still on, looked at his boyfriend, internally praying that the younger vampire wouldn't give Elena's survival away.

At that precise moment, he would have given everything that was his, and maybe even what wasn't, so that Hans' “reason for living” would just think it the best time to come around and surprise her husband, because, you know, she was alive, and had been searching for her half-definitely-crazed Falkenbach vampire since forever.

To the man's utter surprise, his wish came true.

But in the worst way possible.

Alaric's cellphone rang, catching the hunter's and both vampires' attention.

He took it out of his pocket, half-aware that it was Elena's phone calling him, and so, surely, Elena calling him. Picking up the call, he hoped that Hans wouldn't recognize the doppelganger's voice. Freaking vampires and their super-hearing.

“What's up?”

The hunter really tried to sound as normal as he could.

It didn't work well, if Damon's wince was anything to go by.

He was fortunate to be a Saltzman, or he'd have been ever more obvious, Alaric mused.

“ _Ric, there's a woman who's asking about you. I tjink I saw her once or twice at the Mystic Grill, lately. Blond, in her twenties, thirties at most.”_

Hans squinted his eyes as he tried to remember where and when he had heard this voice.

Damon's eyes grew wide and round as plates. The hunter took it that it'd be better if he shortened the call as much as he could, before his ancestor managed to identify the caller as the Petrova doppelganger that he had so eagerly said it'd be a pleasure to dispose off only minutes before.

“ _She said her name was Gal, and that you knew each other...”_

The small hope that Hans would notice his wife's diminutive was short-lived, since the vampire didn't react at all, still frowning as he tried to remember. Ric guessed he had believed his wife to be dead for too long to actually be able to believe otherwise without seeing her eye to eye.

“Listen, tell her I'm coming, and go back home, Elena. Where are you right now?”

The answer made the man's guts roll on themselves.

_“Not far away from the Grill. Wait, I can see you.”_

The call ended, and Alaric spined on his heels to see Elena walking towards him, waving to a figure too far away to distinguish their features.

Galswinthe, the man thought.

Too late, though.

Hans had seen the doppelganger, and recognized her, and his gaze had completely ignored Gal.

 


	18. Their inhumanity glaringly exposed for all to see

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood! Blood everywhere! Damn you, Hans! But don't worry, Gal and I still love you.

Hans' eyes widened when he saw her.

The girl was the Petrova doppelganger. Somehow, she hadn't died. Somehow, she was still alive. And if she was still alive...

Klaus could create other hybrids.

If the Original Bastard wasn't already doing so, he might not know yet. But one day, sooner rather than later, he'd hear about the girl. He'd come back, he'd kill anyone who stood in his way, and that included Alaric and his friend, since they were obviously trying to help the girl. He'd come back and destroy many more lives. Because that what the Originals did. They destroyed everything one could hold dear.

They always did.

The life of a girl, the life of the doppelganger, or the lives of innocents?

It wasn't even about his revenge.

Sure, he wouldn't complain if it allowed him to get back at Klaus. There was nothing that mattered more than his revenge. But that didn't mean that his decision couldn't be for the best whatever his own feelings were.

The doppelganger had to die.

A glint of madness disappeared behind a much stronger gleam in the vampire's eyes.

Alaric saw this, and his blood ran cold. He knew that look. He knew that gleam. He had had the same in his own eyes many times before. And that hadn't bode well for anyone.

He had seen it even more often in Theo's eyes. A couple of times in other family members', too. Landyn had been frightening, the two times he had seen her with that look. But the worst of all had been his father, Edward. Only once he had seen his father ready to kill someone, and though Edward Saltzman hadn't acted upon it, it had made Ric understand that for all the differences between his father and those from the main house, the man was still a Satzman.

And a Saltzman was a natural born killer. Even when they decided to ignore it.

Hans had certainly not ignored it. And that look in his eyes, there was no mistaking it.

It wasn't even a real gleam... It was so much more, and so much less at the same time. There was no light, no illumination on the face of a determined Falkenbach. It wasn't about passion, it wasn't about hatred. For them, the look in their eyes, it was something so bright and fierce that sometimes, the hunter wished he could be blind rather than seeing it.

Because that look in his ancestor's eyes, it was their inhumanity glaringly exposed for all to see.

The thought bolted in his mind, horrific in its clarity.

Hans would kill Elena as soon as he wanted to. And no one could stop him.

Alaric walked between the vampire and the doppelganger without thinking of the consequences, only thinking that it was the thing to do. His mind had gone in battle-mode, even though he knew very well that he couldn't outdo Hans Falkenbach.

The pain in his body was terrible as a hand pierced his skin, going so much faster than any human hand could go. Hans had aimed for the heart, and the hunter being taller than Elena, the attack had stricken right between his two lower left ribs.

Who said that a Saltzman's instincts were for him to stay alive? No one ever. Alaric's intincts were meant to help him achieve his goal. Even if he had to lose his life in the process.

He stared at his ancestor's face. Hans still seemed cold and inhuman, his face hadn't moved an inch, but Ric knew better. If the vampire really wasn't affected with harming his own blood, then he wouldn't have stopped. Hans would have pierced through the man who had put himself in the way, and his hand would have ripped Elena's heart out of her chest.

The vampire could do that.

Ric knew he could.

His ancestor had the strength, the determination and the capacities to do just that. Luckily he didn't seem to have the mind to do it.

But he could have done it.

Because he was more then seven hundreds years old, because he was a vampire, because he was a Falkenbach. And killing wasn't a bid deal for any of those aspects of his personality.

Alaric's eyes then wandered to Damon.

The younger vampire had frozen the moment everyone had moved. Ric's movements weren't so fast compared to Hans', or even Damon's, but his boyfriend had done nothing to stop him, because he hadn't understood. He hadn't understood what was going on, he hadn't understood what the older vampire was going to do. And even if he had, there had been nothing he could do.

He wasn't fast, strong, old enough to antagonize Hans without losing his life right away. If the older vampire might have had a soft spot for someone here, it'd have been his own fesh and blood, not some random vampire he had just met.

Alaric had known that, and had acted, because he was the most likely one to stop his ancestor, and maybe, not to die in the process.

Maybe.

If possible, the hunter'd rather not die this time, even if he had the ring on his finger. Dying was painful, and a hassle, and not fun at all. And there was also the fact that someone could pass by, see him being killed, and leave screaming to rouse the whole neighborhood before anyone could compel him to shut up and forget.

Blood dripped from his clothes, from his wound, from his stomach, outside of his body, on the ground, on Hans' arm that was still half in his stomach, inside his body, around the other organs, in one word, in every place where it wasn't meant to be.

Ric felt a bit dizzy, but his mind was still focused. He wasn't a bloody Saltzman for nothing, he thought, inwardly smirking at the horrid pun.

He saw Damon becoming paler than ever, he heard Elena gasping behind him, he felt as Hans was struggling not to take his arm out right away and aggravate the wound, not to lett it bled all out in a single minute. He heard someone, a vampire, rushing to his side in a blur.

And he closed his eyes.

To die or not to die, that is the question.

Well, not so much.

He felt the coldness of the Gilbert ring on his finger.

And that was it.

He really, really needed to sleep. To shut down the pain.

Hans blinked as he saw his umpteenth time grandson fall in his arms, or, more accurately, slide down his arm. He should have known, with one of his own around, that it couldn't go well. That somehow, unless this particular Falkenach was one of the cold-blooded bastards, he wouldn't let him kill a girl without an explanation.

Something unpleasantly cold grasped his internal organs, with a touch that froze everything in him, his feelings and perceptions, the physical and the spiritual, not the way it froze when he let his Falkenbach side win over his morality, but in a way he had experienced only twice.

The death of his daughter, and the death of his wife.

A touch on his arm, a scent near him, a voice in his ear, broke the ice that was invading his being.

“Hans, love, let him go.”

And the vampire saw his wife, his beautiful, amazing, wonderful Galswinthe.

Gal wasn't supposed to be alive, to be here, even less to talk to him. Kol had killed her, “to stir up trouble”. Many, many decades ago. Centuries ago.

But she was here, and he did was she told him to do.

Galswinthe sighed when Hans obeyed her, still looking like the world was going to collapse under him, under her, under everything, and that then the world was going to end. She'd have to deal with him. Later.

For now, Alaric was dying on the ground, a gaping hole between his ribs, blood flowing out of his punctured stomach, and she couldn't have that. Of all her scions, he was one of those who deserved the less to die.

She looked around, and as always, the men were useless. Rolling her eyes, she ignored the thunderstruck Hans and the pale-as-death Damon, and only glanced at the young girl already kneeling down next to Alaric, her hands on the wound to stop the blood flow.

Gal winced, suddenly fully aware of what had happened. Hans had recognized the doppelganger as soon as he had seen her, and as Elena was the luckiest girl in the universe, she just had to meet the vampire who wanted her death more than even Klaus had wanted her for his ritual.

The vampire took a deep breath and bit into her wrist, before feeding Ric her blood.

She really hoped it would suffice to keep him alive. One Falkenbach vampire was enough to deal with, thank you very much.

If not... Well, it'd be the teacher's choice, she mused while glancing at Damon. Ric didn't strike her to be the type to become a vampire, but if he accidentaly became one, she wasn't sure he wouldn't accept, if only to be with his boyfriend a bit longer than expected.

She looked back at the wound, arching an eyebrow at Elena, who quickly understood and withdrew her hands, ready to press onto the wound again if it wasn't any better. The two women watched for a second the gaping hole reverting back to an almost flawless skin, only drenched in blood. Gal breathed in relief, and frowned. Her eyes wandered on the teacher's torso, and she sweared.

“The wound isn't gone! It's smaller, but it's still here. Damn it!”

The was a little hole almost invisible in the pool of blood, but it was here, fleecing slowly, almost gently, and if she hadn't seen it, they could have left the man to bleed to death without meaning it.

“You have a witch around here, don't you? Bring her to Alaric's apartment while we'll take him there. Vampire blood can only help him so much, and this time I believe it won't be enough.”

Elena nodded and left running for Bonnie.

Hans and Damon stared dumbly at Galswinthe as she stood up.

“What the freaking hell are you waiting for?! I can't just put him on my shoulder like a potato bad when he's injured! One of you two morons go and fetch a car, and faster than that!!!”

Hans blinked, opened his mouth to talk, but she snapped at him.

“You almost killed your grandson, you idiot! Now you shut up, and you do what I order you to.”

Grandson, great-great-great-...-grandson, whatever.

Gal was pleased to see Damon disappear to his car, while her own husband was staring at her dumbfounded and covered in blood.

“Honestly, men are useless, sometimes.”

At that, Hans stopped trying to talk to her, obviously hurt, but also painfully aware that she was right. And for now, she thought it was for the best, because his past actions, and not only nearly killing Ric, but all that he had done since their daughter's death, had made her very angry with him.

Damon came back quickly, and they managed to put Alaric in the car so that he wouldn't bleed all over it, not that, for once, Damon minded, but because it would be better if the hunter could survive the ride.

Alaric's apartment was closer than the boarding house or the hospital, but climbing the stairs wasn't easy with a bleeding and unconscious man. Nevertheless, they succeeded.

When Elena came back with Bonnie, the young witch seemed completely panicked, but she managed just well until the moment her skin touched her teacher's.

Bonnie blanched.

Damon realized she had never came into physical contact with Ric, and wondered if Falkenbachstoo triggered a special feeling for witches. Apparently, the answer was yes.

Galswinthe's upper lip twitched.

Hans suddenly came back to the land of consciousness.

Elena didn't understand a thing, and frankly, no one who didn't know that Alaric wasn't a regular human being wouldn't have either.

Bonnie stepped back, and run to the bathroom. There, she vomited everything that had once been in her stomach. Realization downed on her.

Alaric Saltzman wasn't just a normal human being, though she was sure he wasn't exactly supernatural either. And whatever he was, it triggered something more dreadful in her mind than even what the contact of a vampire would cause.

The young witch shivered, but went back to her patient. She'd ask later, once he'd be healed. But she'd ask.

 


	19. Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, I added a chapter without even noticing. Oh well. it'll be 39 chapters, then. Which means that I'm ( almost ) halfway done. Cheers!  
> (cough)for this part(cough)

Damon was sitting on a chair, waiting.

That was all he could do.

To wait.

Alaric had almost died protecting Elena, and the vampire had only stood there, unable to do anything. Shock, fear, and mostly incomprehension. This couldn't be happening.

This couldn't have happened.

When Galswinthe had shouted at him, he had finally understood what was going on, but hadn't been able to do more than what he was ordered to do.

Alaric wasn't supposed to die. The man could take care of himself, and Damon could take care of his lover too. So how had it happened?

The young vampire saw Bonnie doing her witchy things on Ric, and he felt a pang of hope, as well as one of fear. The girl was powerful, he knew it, and she wouldn't let her teacher die if she could do otherwise. But the witch was young and inexperienced. She knew little of her powers, and couldonly do so much.

Damon saw the worried expression on Gal's face, as her eyes darted between her descendant and her husband. He saw Hans Falkenbach staring dumbly into nothingness, and anger seized his heart. The young vampire wanted to stand up, punch the older vampire and yell at him until he ran out of breath, that is, never. But he did no such thing. He was too dazed to do anything.

And the Falkenbach really seemed lost, so yelling at him wouldn't do any good. Now that he had his wife back he had no real reason to hate Klaus so much, even if he still didn't like him, after all, he had spent decades desiccated thanks to the Original. He had no reason to attack the Petrova doppelganger anymore. And he looked like a man who had just tried to kill his own flesh and blood and couldn't possibly comprehend how in hell that had happened.

Hans Falkenbach seemed to be a lot more okay than before. Damon wouldn't put him in the newly-turned-good-guys group yet, but there was definitely some progress. Before, the Falkenbach vampire had been creepy. Now, he was nothing more than a dangerous vampire with no reason to threaten anyone.

Someone sat next to Damon, and the vampire looked up, his eyes falling in two light brown eyes.

“You really care about him, don't you, Damon?”

Elena's voice was soft and caring, and the vampire didn't find it in him to argue that thinking the other way was the stupidest thing to do in the world. So he only nodded, glancing at the sleeping form of his boyfriend, laid on his bed with a witch trying to save his life. Soon enough, the vampire's eyes went back to Elena, because he didn't want to think that maybe, Ric could die this night.

The young woman looked at him fondly, and let a small smile creep up on her lips.

“You know, the first weeks I got to know you, I thought there was no way in hell that you'd ever remember what it was like to love someone. You were so engrossed with Katherine, getting her back and everything else, but you didn't really love her anymore, even then. Maybe, if you had freed her and her love had been genuine, and not that masquerade that we now know of, you could have learnt anew, I don't know. But then, you didn't love anyone anymore.”

Damon said nothing.

Maybe Elena was right, Katherine had only been an obsession, as making his brother's life a living hell had been another one.

Maybe not.

But he knew that, even if maybe the girl wasn't completely right, she certainly wasn't exactly wrong eitherway. At a time, he had turned off his emotions, and when he had come back to Mystic Falls the year before, it still wasn't completely on.

Elena continued, speaking softly, because the room was full of vampires who could hear what she said anyway, and because that was nobody's business.

“And eventually, I saw you softening. Sure, youwerestill out killing people, but not as much, not as often, and rarely without a half-good reason. When you killed Ric, you didn't think he'd come back to life, but he did. And you two hated each other. But in the end, you were the only ones who could become friends with the other one. Alaric was broken because of Isobel, and he knew of things one should not know about, especially in Mystic Falls. You, Damon, you were broken because of Katherine, and you were one of those things that nobody should know about, especially in Mystic Falls. You two had only the other one to speak to.”

A pale smile twisted the vampire's face. About this, she wasn't wrong at all. It was surprising that the so childish Elena could be so wise, as long as it did have nothing to do with herself, or her and Stefan, or her survival.

“Stefan, myself, Bonnie, we weren't right to talk to. I'm just a kid, compared to Alaric, and even more compared to you. Stefan isn't close to Ric and was completely wary of you, and I can't blame him for that, honestly. Bonnie is supernatural too, but she's as young as I am, and she rightfully hate you after what happened with her grandmother.”

Yeah, Damon had to admit that he hadn't been keen on making friends at the time. But now, things were starting to become better, and he didn't want that to disappear.

This time, Ric had the ring. But one day, maybe he wouldn't have it anymore. Maybe there was a limited number of resurrections in the ring, maybe someone would take it away before killing the hunter, maybe...

Maybe one day Alaric would definitely die, and not of old age.

For the first time, Damon really thought of asking the teacher to become like him, to turn and be with him forever and ever. He dismissed the idea. It wasn't the right moment, the right person to talk to about this. And he was a bit insecure, that Alaric wouldn't accept.

Yes, he'd ask one day, but not now. He was going to wait, and maybe to prove to Ric that he was worth it, that they could have an eternity of happiness together, if only the hunter agreed to become a vampire. One day, he'd ask.

Elena's voice took him back to reality.

“If you love him, Damon, if you really love him, then do whatever is necessary for you two to be happy. For now, he hasn't been very lucky in love. Try to change that, because Ric deserves a bright future.”

And that being said, the young woman walked away, taking a last look at her kind-of-father-in-law / closest-person-to-a-paternal-figure / history teacher before leaving. She sincerey hoped that for once, Damon wouldn't blow it all up.

After a while, Bonnie left, ignoring Damon and observing the two other vampires warily. She had bandaged the wound, and used her magic to fasten the healing and clear the inside of the hunter's body, since there was blood everywhere between his organs, and mostly where there should be none.

Obviously, they had had the right idea not the call for a doctor or send Ric to the hospital, because they'd certainly would have asked, A, why and how the local history teacher had been injured, and B, why he had so much internal damages when the wound was this little. And there was the fact that if Ric died at the hospital, that would be hell to compel everyone to forget about it once the hunter would have come back to life.

So there they were, three vampires, Damon Salvatore, Hans and Galswinthe Falkenbach, and the silence was unbearable.

After a while, Gal looked at her husband and asked, clearly upset, what the hell he had been thinking. The vampire looked sheepishly at his wife and responded that he hadn't been thinking, not for ages, not since the Original Vampire Kol had barged in a feast with Klaus, his other siblings, some other vampires, and a lot of bleeding humans. The Original had walked straight to Hans, and boasted about having met his wonderful wife that he had abandoned at their daughter's death. Hans had tried to ignore him, for he had always refused to acknowledge the issue and his distasteful behavior, but had failed when Kol had finally said that, being in a generous mood, he had fixed the problem by killing Galswinthe Falkenbach.

Damon listened, half-interested, half-worrying about the sleeping hunter, because he had nothing better to do except to worry about Alaric, which he was already doing.

“That's when I completely lost it, Gal, and you know me, I mean, you know how we are, me and my family, I've told you. I froze, and everything, everything went completely blank. It was the same with Leona's death. There was nothing that mattered anymore, so why should I bother with the consequences? We, the Falkenbachs, me, since I'm the only one, I'm not the same as the other vampires. There's no turn-humanity-off button. Maybe because we're, I'm already half-turned off. I grabbed the nearest vampire and literally sent him flying onto Kol. The poor guy was cut in half, but I couldn't care less. You weren't there anymore, and that was all that mattered. Love, one of those things that I can feel, was not anymore, but murder, torture, guilt, all those things that I can't feel, were still there. And I did what I do best.”

Gal nodded. She knew what Hans did best.

“It was a carnage. I'm not sure how many died that night, but I know that Elijah and Klaus themselves had to step in to stop me. After that, they locked me up in a cell, and left me there to desiccate for years, decades even. And that was always the same thing. At some point, I'd escape, slaughter tens of vampires, werewolves, witches, wizards, humans alike. And then I'd calm down. And then I'd go mad once again, a word, a sentence about you, and I was back in the cell.”

The vampire glanced at the man sleeping, in whom he recognized some of his own features.

“Have you...”

Galswinthe smiled a bit, a sad grin.

“Kept an eye on the family? Yes. They are the last of the Falkenbach, you know? Your brother's and sisters' line died out sometime around the fourteenth century. One day, the family divided between the Falkenbachs, who stayed in Germany, and the Saltzmans, who started their own estranged branch here in America. The Falkenbachs eventually disappeared with the last great war in Europe.”

Hans stared in front of him, understanding that he was the last one of his family to bear the name of Falkenbach. It wasn't sad, only a bit strange.

The vampire then turned to the younger one, still silent and watching over his descendant.

“His name is Alaric, isn' it?”

The question startled Damon, who blinked before nodding.

“Tell him I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.”

And Hans stood up, looking meaningfully at his wife. Gal nodded and he walked to the door.

Damon looked up at Galswinthe. The older vampire caressed her descendant's hair with the back of her hand, a soft smile on her lips, and sat on the bed next to Ric. She then turned to Damon.

“I'm staying in the motel out of town. I'm taking Hans with me. He needs to heal mentally, and that could take a while. Visit us when Alaric wakes up, and then, we'll be on our way.”

“You need some time alone, don't you?”

Gal shrugged.

“I'm not sure how much. Visit, and we'll give you a way to contact us no matter where we are, as well as my phone number. I know what you're thinking about Ric, and if he says yes, or if the situation gives him no choice, you'll need help to deal with the turning. A Falkenbach doesn't become a regular vampire, as you heard. The switch, but also the feeding, it's really different for them.”

Damon blushed a little.

“We're not there yet. And I don't think he wants it.”

More like, he feared that Alaric wouldn't want it.

Gal walked to the door, and before leaving, said one more thing.

“He might change his mind. And you never know, if, as we were, he's forced to either die or turn, I believe he will take the opportunity to be with you, Damon. Eitherway, our second honeymoon could as well be years long, so you're welcome to call once in a while.”

And she shut the door quietly.

Damon went to sleep next to the hunter, trying to ignore the for-once-harsh smell of blood coming from Ric's wound. When he woke up the next day, Alaric was already up, as if nothing had ever happened. They took a quick breakfast, and Ric frowned as he smelled his cup of coffee.

When they arrived at the motel, Damon knocked on the door, and it opened on a very surprised Gal who looked at the coffee-drenched vampire in front of her. Alaric came in, ignoring his boyfriend.

“Don't be surprised if Damon stinks of cat pee; he poured some in my coffee, I returned the favor.”

 


	20. Overall, the same thing

Galswinthe moved to let her visitors in, frowning as she smelled the odd scent on Damon Salvatore. Apparently, Alaric had considered it fitting to pour his altered coffee on the offender. Strange how males could be childish, sometimes.

She closed the door behind her, and turned to see her husband sitting on the motel's bed and purposely avoiding his descendant's eyes, not that she couldn't understand his need to do so. Ric and Damon had taken the two chairs in the room and were looking at her.

Feeling that once again she had to do all the work, Gal rolled her eyes and sat next to Hans.

“How are you, Alaric?”

The hunter shrugged, saying that he had known worst. His ancestor raised an eyebrow, doubtful, but he wasn't going to tell her that he had already died twice. First, he didn't want to worry her, second, it wasn't a lack of trust or anything, but he'd rather keep the Gilbert ring a secret a bit more. Too many people already knew of it, and he didn't want to be killed more times than necessary, just because it wasn't such a big deal and it was easier to disable him this way.

An unpleasant silence took over the room, and after a while Gal forced her husband to look up at his great-great-great-add-a-number-grandson.

“I know it's dull and all, Hans, but you could at least say 'sorry'...”

She had that exasperated tone that totally meant he'd better not drag this on anymore. Hans Falkenbach knew his wife well enough and decided the apologies were worth the unease, while the unease wasn't worth Gal's anger.

He turned his daylight ring around his ring finger, looked up, looked back down, and finally his eyes met Alaric Saltzman's.

The only human in the room looked at Hans with renewed interest. Now that he knew the man was his ancestor, and now that he wasn't bothered with thoughts about how there was a psychopathic vampire with Falkenbachs' instincts in a bar full of unsuspecting humans, he could see the likeness in their features. Sure, the two Falkenbachs didn't have much in common, it was to be expected after seven hundred years. But Ric was a typical Saltzman, and as such a typical Falkenbach, as the photograph of Karl Falkenbach had previously proved.

The hunter and the vampire didn't look alike, but they looked like parts of a same family. Aside from one or two particular features that were obviously the same, their overall faces were like two versions of one basic idea, not exactly the same angles, not exactly the same color, but overall, the same thing.

“I didn't mean to.”

Well, at least their voices had nothing to do with each other's.

Alaric was going to say that it didn't matter, really, while Damon was ready to be outraged and angry and unsufferable because hell, it was his boyfriend that the older vampire had almost killed just hours before, and Gal was staring stubbornly at the ceiling wondering how in all freaking hell she had gotten herself involved with those kinds of persons in the first place.

But Hans beat them to it.

“I mean, obviously I meant to kill the Petrova doppelganger, but I wasn't in my right mind, hadn't been in centuries, actually, and I know it's not an excuse, but it's the truth, and I can't do better. And I certainly didn't mean to attack you, Alaric, that's it, isn't it? You are my blood, after all, and I don't kill just for the hell of it. Not anymore, at least. But when I'm angry I can be rather unstoppable. I'm really, really sorry.”

He had mumbled his apologies all along, but somehow, everybody in the room had understood his mumbling, and the two visitors were staring at him as if he had grown a second head. Galswinthe merely smiled.

This wasn't the same Hans Falkenbach as before. The cold, inhumane feeling Damon, Theo and Ric had felt when they had first talked with the vampire, the dread that twisted their guts after the hunter had sent his cousin away, there was none of it when they listened to this Hans Falkenbach.

This Hans Falkenbach was a perfectly normal man, sorry, vampire, more normal than most of the vampires they had met thus far, and that included Damon who was anything but normal.

Finally, Alaric realized that his ancestor was nothing more than the usual Falkenbach. Normal, until he wasn't anymore. The one he had met at the Mystic Grill wasn't the usual Hans, but the Hans who used all of his Falkenbach abilities. The killer in him, that anger, hatred and revenge had pushed to the surface while burrying anything else.

Ric frowned. Had it been a switched off Falkenbach vampire? He wasn't sure. The hunter had seen, had talked to, had killed switched off vampires, and even if Hans was also a Falkenbach, it still didn't feel the same. Certainly, Hans had enjoyed the thought of hurting Klaus, destroying the Original Bastard from within, but not with the usual vampire detachment. After all, he genuinely wanted revenge. No switched off vampire wanted revenge. They could be gruesome to those that had wronged them, but because their pride had been wounded, and anyway they liked to see others be hurt.

And no switched off vampire cared for their dead wife that they hadn't seen in hundreds of years.

No, obviously, Hans Falkenbach had not switched off his emotions. It had only been the deepest hatred of a man whose wife had been killed, boosted with a bit of inhumanity. Nothing that Ric himself couldn't match.

“It doesn't matter, really. I don't resent you for that. Damon did worst at our first encounter, you know.”

All eyes darted to the younger vampire, who just glared at his boyfriend with a half-amused, half-annoyed look on his face. Then Gal raised an eyebrow at her descendant, while Hans watched, a bit lost. In his defense, he didn't know of Ric's relationship with Damon, not in that way at least. If possible, his wife intended to keep it a secret for one or two months, for she didn't want to stir him too much.

“Alaric, what did he do exactly?”

“When I first met him, Damon was feeding on my wife.”

Gal's eyes widened, and she tried to think back to the demise of one Isobel Flemming, to what Damon and Ric had told her about her vampiric return, and she frowned.

When the hunter noticed how Hans had tensed at the statement, he glanced at his boyfriend and thought it would do to smooth things a little if he didn't want a dead-dead vampire boyfriend instead of a kind-of-dead one.

And he liked Damon quite a lot. Kind-of-dead was way better than dead-dead.

“No one does murder anyone before I finish. Damon killed Isobel, so I went after him for two years to kill him, but he hadn't actually killed her, not in the definitive way at least, and she had chosen to disappear and leave me behind on her own, so I don't blame him the least about what happened.”

Ric left out the part where he died for the first time, for he thought it wouldn't have been wise to do otherwise. He had seen the look in his ancestor's eyes when he had talked about a murdered wife, surely thinking of his own... misadventure. And for the first time, the teacher mused that their stories, while completely different, held many troubling similarities.

They talked a bit after that. Gal gave them her cellphone number. Hans asked what was a cellphone, his wife paled as she realized that he had not only missed most of the newest inventions and she'd have to teach him about it, but that he had been half-oblivious of everything that had happened even when he hadn't been locked up in an underground prison, too busy with his revenge. Sure, Hans had learned what he needed to adapt to the new world he bursted into each time, but nothing more. Gal was lucky that he knew what a dustbin was.

Ric and Damon were about to leave when Galswinthe stopped them with a slightly worried look on her face.

“I simply wondered, do you know of a good place to bury a corpse?”

Alaric blinked at that, and withdrew his hand from the door handle. This wasn't the kind of conversation he'd have outside.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I met one of Klaus' vampires a while back, that he had left behing certainly to 'watch out for something suspect' or anything else the paranoid Original could think of, and well, with Elena being supposedly, you know, dead, I thought it'd be better to get rid of him. Beside, the guy had his emotions turned off, and was feasting like crazy in the nearest towns. With Mystic Falls being Myst Falls, I tought it'd be wiser to simply... off him.”

And better for the humans too. There was a world between feeding and slaughtering.

Damon and Ric looked at each other, certainly worried about the possibility of another spy reporting Elena's survival to Klaus. Gal quicky reassured them.

“So, I buried the body in the forest, and went looking for others. That's why you didn't see me much lately. I actually found a second one, sent by Klaus just to check on things, you should have one month before he does that again, yesterday, but when I went to get rid of the first one, I was almost caught by a sheriff deputy. With them taking vervain, I can't do much, and if you know of a better, safer place...”

The hunter nodded, thoughtful. If they were a bit lucky, Klaus hadn't ordered to his lackeys to report if there was nothing to say, just to go and live their lives. The Original didn't really care about most of the vampires working under him, he usually picked one in the town he was in, compelled them to do his bidding, and forgot about them. It wasn't as if he had friends, after all. Not anymore.

“Where did you leave the body?”

“Actually, it's in the car trunk. I went to you after I killed him, but you were... a bit busy.”

“Way to say it. I guess you were too busy too after my... accident, and anyway, it isn't as if you knew of a place to get rid of it.”

Alaric shared a look with Damon, and finally they proposed to do that themselves, so that the couple could finally go on their trip. They had nothing better to do for now.

Gal and Hans argued a bit, not too willing to burden them with a body, which was understandable, but finally relented. Hans really needed to spend time with his wife, and it was obvious that he had been deeply hurt with the last centuries and his own actions.

The four of them left the motel, discreetly moved the corpse from one trunk to another, the vampire couple cleansed the trunk, and went back to their motel to pack their things before leaving.

Ric and Damon then headed to their favorite burying spot, because really, you need one when you live in Mystic Falls and deal with Original murderous Vampires and others psychos. Damon suspected that Liz had her own spot for the sheriff department, since the authorities in Mystic Falls had this habit to make the more strange deaths just... disappear.

Damon swore loudly when a sheriff deputy stopped them on the side of the road, and Ric had to discreetly poke him in the ribs to make him shut up.

“Papers, please.”

Damon complied, wondering what had triggered the inspection. After all, Mystics Falls was a quiet place. At least, it was supposed to be.

The sheriff deputy nodded, and asked them to open the trunk.

Ric and Damon looked at each other, then looked at the man oddly. They had a bit of a problem, and the sheriff deputy was certainly under vervain. Luckily, Damon was known as an anti-vampire activist by the Town Council, as hilarious as it may sound, and if he had a vampire's body staked in the chest in his trunk, it wouldn't be so strange, would it be? But still, onlyElizabeth knew that Ric knew too, and they'd have liked it better if things had stayed this way.

“May I ask why?”

The hunter's tone was polite, slightly surprised, all in all, very well toned, but there was something that unnerved the sheriff deputy a lot about it. Like, it was making him shuder, as if he knew this voice from a previous and unpleasant encounter, but he couldn't remember it.

“I'm sorry, it's only that the FBI is in town about a serial killer, and we were asked to perform searches on the locals' cars for some reason, though I have no idea what they are looking for...”

Ric mentally swore that he'd strangle Theodoric next time he saw him, but complied while Damon turned off the ignition.

The sheriff deputy gasped when he saw the body, reached for his gun, realized that the body was all grey and venous and had a stake pushed in its chest, and he relaxed a bit. He glanced at Damon, at Alaric, and decided to talk about it with sheriff Forbes.

“I suppose you won't talk about that to the FBI?”

“Obviously not.”

 


	21. Like a crash of thunder in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in 3x04  
> Obviously, ignore any scene of the show about the growing relationship between Damon and Elena. I don't even know why I bother writing this, since it's obvious.  
> They're friends.  
> All in all, the story is the same, but some details aren't the same. just a reminder, in case you forgot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how you think that holidays are great because you have time, and so you'll be able to work on your fanfic? Those thoughts are lies. During holidays, you won't want to "work". So you won't "work" on your fanfic half as much as you do when you're busy.

Alaric closed the door behind him and went to sit on the bed. Damon was searching his clothes for something to wear for the party, and Ric certainly didn't want to interrupt the vampire as he dived into his sea of costly clothes.

Caroline's father was in town, and he was from one of the founding families, and he knew about vampires, and he was able to torture his own daughter thinking it was for her own good, and Damon had had to compel the crackpot. Bill Forbes was proving to be a pain in the ass...

And as always, Damon was being way too thoughtless about that.

The vampire's head appeared out of his closet.

“I hope you won't be going to the party wearing that. I want to show off my sexy boyfriend, you know.”

Alaric arched an eyebrow.

“I thought we were being discret about that?”

“You're ashamed of me? I'm hurt, Ric. No, seriously, it's just that your being a proper teacher also means you have too look good at social events, especially when the sheriff department knows you're secretly hunting vampires with the awesome and definitely-not-vampiric me.”

The teacher rolled his eyes and left to get himself ready.

When they finally got to the party that was supposed to conceal a Council meeting but was just being fancy in their opinion, Alaric and Damon got a very unpleasant surprise.

Bill Forbes was there, and from what he said, he clearly remembered everything, even what he wasn't supposed to. How he did it, they had no idea, and Damon was clearly upset. Never before a human had resisted his compulsion.

When the man walked away Damon was in a foul mood. Alaric gently put his hand on his boyfriend's arm, intimating him to stay calm and not do anything harsh.

“You're not killing him, Damon.”

Ric's tone was cool, and Damon should have known he was being more than serious about it.

But Forbes had been an asshole to his daughter, to him, and worst of all, to Alaric. The man had dared to threaten the two of them, and the vampire wouldn't take it. Who did Forbes think he was? He had no right to question their friendship, or the hunter's acceptance of his boyfriend's nature. It wasn't as if he could help it, that he was a vampire.

“You heard him, Ric. He will tell the Council who I am if I only piss him off a bit. And I always piss people off. I don't even do it on purpose, most of the time.”

Seeing that Damon was joking, Alaric thought that maybe, he'd get him to calm down enough and not kill anyone tonight. So he went on joking. Everything for a calm night.

“As if I'd believe that.”

“I don't know, Ric. Maybe it's because I'm so handsome. Men fear for their girls, as if I am responsible for them drooling all over me. And the girls who don't fall for my good looks thinks I use women and toss them aside afterwards.”

At that point he was almost whining, and Alaric had good hopes.

“That's only because they never saw you and me together. I hope you enjoy our entertainment sessions too much to risk it by playing around. And no, don't answer that, because I know you will only be an ass about it even if you don't think it.”

To the teacher's surprise, Damon blushed.

“Don't mention it...”

The vampire's mind was drifting to the most awkward sex moments they had had since they had gotten together. His first not-so-manly orgasm as Ric's length had hit his prostate, the one time he had cried out his boyfriend's name when they usually weren't so vocal, the way he sometimes got so horny waiting for his lover that he just had to take care of it himself and that time Ric had walked on him doing... well. Sure, guys shouldn't be worried about him going after their chicks. He was literally addicted to Ric's cock, it seemed.

But it wasn't the point, not now, not with Forbes out there, threatening him, saying that Ric was even worse than a vampire because he was a human tolerating bloodsuckers as friends. And he had that way of his to ignore compulsion...

Tensing again, the vampire went back to the first topic of the conversation.

Bill Forbes.

“How can he be immune to compulsion?”

Alaric felt that the discussion was drifting back into dangerous waters, but Damon had a point, so he couldn't exactly brush it aside.

“No idea. Apparently Forbes simply has a mind of steel. I guess compulsion is the same as hypnosis, one with enough self-control can ignore it. The only other option would be if he wasn't just a human. Caroline would have been a witch if he was a wizard, he's definitely not a werewolf, and there's just no way he's a vampire.”

Or if he was, he was also a bloody hypocrite.

Yeah, no way.

Thinking about it...

Damon eyed his boyfriend suspisciously. A Falkenbach wasn't exactly a regular human being...

“You ignored my compulsion that time during the 50's Decade Dance.”

Alaric rolled his eyes at that.

“I was holding on vervain as if on dear life, Damon.”

“Oh. But maybe I should give it a try, just for us to know.”

The teacher didn't like the turn the conversation was taking, because he knew that if he let the vampire try and actually wasn't immune to compulsion, Damon would come up with ideas, sexual or not, that he was certain he wouldn't enjoy being reminded of. But if it could keep the vampire's mind away from Forbes, he'd gladly sacrifice himself.

“Erm, well, maybe. Another time. And I'll allow you to make me do anything you want.”

Damon smirked, arched an eyebrow, and Ric knew he was in future deep shit.

“Even profess your undying love for me in front of the whole school?”

The hunter's face hardened and Damon knew there was no way his boyfriend would not resent him if he made him do that. But that would be so fun too watch... He could dream, couldn't he?

“Do you really want to lose your genitals, Damon?”

Definitely not. It would stay a dream and nothing more. After all, those parts of the vampire's anatomy would grow back, but that didn't mean he was willing to experience the pain and effects of castration, even temporary.

So they went inside, and the party happened. After a while, the council members locked themselves out of sight, and Alaric waited with Elena for Damon to return. They could only hope that both Damon and Bill Forbes would stay civil and that no death threats would be exchanged post-meeting.

A fool's hope, they knew, but they tried to be optimist.

Yet again, they should have known that Mystics Falls never made it easy for its residents.

When Damon joined them, he was fuming with anger.

“That son of a bitch! He knows nothing, and will never know anything since I'm going to kill him now. Right, I don't even know why I came back here, since I've to go and murder the bastard.”

And the vampire was already walking away, but Ric got in his way.

“Damon...”

“He threatened you, your job, he insulted your honor as a human being, your intellect, he said that it didn't matter since I didn't care anyway, because vampires don't have feelings, because I'm ready to drop you any time I want!”

That's when Alaric realized it. Damon wasn't listening anymore, and he wouldn't listen again until he got rid of Bill Forbes, the man who had dared to question his humanity, his newly found anchor to sanity. The fact that Caroline's father was exactly that, Caroline's father, didn't matter. The fact that the man didn't know what Damon's feelings for Alaric really were didn't matter.

Bill Forbes would die that night, forget the consequences, forget Alaric's opinion on the matter, even if the teacher may come to hate him because of the vampire's actions, it didn't matter as long as Alaric could be safe.

And there was no way the hunter would let that happen.

“Damon, you won't.”

A manic smile spread on the vampire's face.

“Oh yes I will.”

One step.

Alaric didn't bulge. He wouldn't. And Damon knew it. He looked at the hunter's hand. It was here.

A tear rolled down his cheek, a drop of salted water broke in his smirk, and in the end his face wasn't so truthful anymore. It was only a mask of self-hatred, ridiculous, farcical mask.

“I'm sorry, Ric.”

Alaric and Damon had forgotten Elena, but she hadn't forgotten she was there. She tried, really, she tried, but what could she do if even Alaric couldn't stop Damon? The teacher was the one the vampire loved, he was the one who had influence over Damon. But the hunter couldn't do a thing.

Elena would have liked to be able to do something, but as always, she wasn't able to do anything. She hated herself for that. But it was true nonetheless.

Before she could even move, before she could even talk, Damon had moved.

Alaric was faster than any human. But he wasn't as fast as a vampire.

The sound it made when the teacher's neck broke wasn't loud. But that's all Elena and Damon could hear, like a crash of thunder in the night.

A body fell to the ground. The corpse of a man whose spine had been broken with a single move. A man whose blue eyes, even dead, were tearing into Damon with the coldness of inhumanity. For a second, Damon froze. He knew that look in the eyes of the hunter. And not because he had already seen him dead twice. Both times, he hadn't looked at the man's eyes.

That look of coldness in Ric's eyes, those dead eyes, with no consciousness behind them, those dead eyes, with no humanity behind them, they were the eyes Alaric displayed when his Falkenbach side took over, when his oddness as a human being made itself known, when every feeling he had couldn't matter anymore, when he was able to kill without a second thought.

Sometimes, Alaric had the eyes of a dead man while being alive.

That was why he could be so frightening. And that was why no one could be allowed to come near the hunter with bad intentions. If Forbes had any idea who the vampire-tolerating human really was...

Damon's tears had stopped.

He looked at his boyfriend's still body, his face a mask of steel.

And he walked away, to the Lockwoods' house, to where Bill Forbes was awaiting his demise, even if unknowingly. Now that he had done the irrevocable, he wouldn't stop. If he did, he'd have killed Ric for nothing. He'd have destroyed his relationship for nothing.

Once again, he had lost everything.

And this time, it was because of Bill Forbes, a man who was nothing to him, a man who had no right to meddle in his life. The first time, it had been because of Katherine, whom he had loved, and because of his father, who would never stop, no matter how much he hated him, to be his father. This second time...

It wasn't something that'd be forgiven.

He knew deep down he was to blame too. He knew he had let his tamper get the better of him, he knew his rashness had worsened the situation. But that wasn't something he could change, or at least not so quickly.

Killing Forbes, on the other hand, could be done pretty quickly.

So he would do it.

Because it was easier to act than to think right now. To take his mind off the sound of Alaric's neck cracking under his own hand. To forget that he had killed the man he loved so much he couldn't find another way to protect him, no matter how twisted it really was.

Everything after that happened in a haze.

Damon let his anger control him, and he didn't care at all when he bit into Bill Forbes' neck, he didn't care at all when Caroline got in his way, he didn't care at all when he finally walked away.

Elena saw him come back to them bloody and angry, she saw him pick up delicately his lover's body, and she saw him leave for the boarding house with a dazed look on his face. She said nothing. There was nothing to say.

 


	22. Damned Damon Bloody Salvatore the Great Bastard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 22 is here! Cheers!  
> You've got nothing to be proud of! Yes, you wrote another chapter, and so what?! You should have written it one month ago, if you hadn't been post-poning! How many things did you not do this summer that you had to do? What about your neglected blog? All the times you said I'll write a chapter of "Each a monster" tomorrow and you didn't? The sisty or so books you had to read for school, and you read barely more than ten?! Eh, what do you have to... Bluwartghhelpmeeegeeerh!  
> Do not worry, it was only me murdering my conscience. Now, you can read.

Alaric gasped for air.

To him, it was strange and unpleasant, waking up without falling asleep beforehand, opening his eyes without closing them to begin with, being suddenly alive again when he hadn't even died.

Sure, he had died.

But it wasn't the point.

Maybe death could be felt. But if that was the case, the hunter forgot everything about it each time he came back to life. To him, there was no death. He was there, dying, and the next second, he was here, gasping for air, eyes wide open, heart in a frenzy. He hadn't died in his mind, only in his body. Time was missing in his head, certainly, but he couldn't help the fact that for him, despite his better judgement, he simply felt that he hadn't died.

So he was here, taking in the place where he was, his brain going half crazy because to him, it was as if he had blinked and the world had changed meanwhile.

Alaric recognized the boarding house. His heart slowed down. He was on the couch, in the library.

And he remembered.

Damon.

Damon bloody Salvatore.

“Took you long enough.”

The hunter turned slightly his head and saw the vampire standing behind the couch, two glasses of bourbon in hand, offering him one. Ric really felt like drinking, if only to forget that his freaking lover had killed him only hours before. But he knew that his first action if he took something breakable like a glass would be to break it on the vampire's face. And anyway, he wasn't willing to give his ex-boyfriend false hope. Or any hope at all.

That was it. Ex-lover, ex-boyfriend, ex-friend. He wasn't going to talk to Damon for a very long time. When he'd talk to the vampire again, he'd be old and wrinkled and on his deathbed. Then, maybe, he'd forgive the bastard. Not any time before his deathbed.

Alaric sent a death glare to Damon, and tried to sit up.

A sharp and terrible pain bolted through his left shoulder. Hissing in pain, the hunter fell back on the couch. Last time had been the same, and if he hadn't understood at the time, it was because he didn't know the scar was an actual magic seal that reacted very badly to every kind of magic. Resurrection was certainly magic.

The hunter glanced at Damon, who looked like he wanted to ask but couldn't dare to, because he certainly knew he was guilty as charged and Ric wouldn't take it well if he showed concern. Not after he had killed him.

Instead, the vampire waited, averting his eyes, and talked only when the teacher managed to sit up, even if not without great pain.

“You're taking longer to come back every time.”

Alaric spat on the carpet. It wasn't his style, but he was downright furious.

“As interesting as it sounds, it's not something we should have had to find out.”

In the corner of his eye, Ric saw Damon wince sightly.

“I'm sorry.”

“You can think it as much as you want, it doesn't change the fact that you killed me.”

The pain was unbearable, and Alaric was tired. But he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep for the rest of the night. It ached too much for him to get any sleep anytime soon. It wouldn't have happened, if not for his how so loveable boyfriend, sorry, ex-boyfriend, Damned Damon Bloody Salvatore the Great Bastard.

Freaking vampire psycho. Why had he even hoped the guy could change? Obviously he had been wrong.

The worst being that he was sure Damon really loved him. He had seen it in the vampire's eyes. He had seen it so many times, the hurt in the eyes of his best friend, when he had been oblivious to all that. He hadn't understood back then. But he had seen it.

Damon was in love with him, so much he couldn't even hide it.

But Damon was a lost cause. He was broken, and now the hunter could see it. There was no going back from this kind of breaking. As much as it hurt him too, Alaric couldn't stay near Damon, or he'll end up as broken as the vampire was. A broken vampire was enough trouble, he wouldn't add a broken Saltzman on top of it. Damon was poison, he destroyed everything he touched, he corrupted every happiness he found.

Somehow Ric managed to stand up, and he was making his way out but Damon's voice stopped him. He'd have liked not to stop, to make a point, that he didn't care about the vampire anymore, but it wasn't the truth. Him too, he loved the other one. It hurt as much as it did hurt Damon. But there was no other choice. They were bad for each other, as much as they were good for each other.

Alaric needed someone to love and to be loved by. But he couldn't possibly stay with someone whose morals were so messed up he thought he could kill him and get away with it. Damon needed someone to love him and keep him within bounds. But he couldn't stay with someone he got so comfortable with he ended up killing them and think it was alright only because he knew they'd come back to life after a bunch of hours.

But no, If his mind was telling him it wasn't the clever thing to do, he still stopped, and listened to this voice so loved and so hated at the same time.

“It might be grave, Alaric. I don't want you... I don't want you to die, Ric, even if you'll laugh at my face after what I did. What if you don't wake up next time, what if next time you stay in between, in other words, dead, because the waiting time comes to days, weeks, months, years?!”

The hunter's voice was dry when he looked back at Damon.

“Why, do you plan to kill me again?”

Of course, that wasn't it.

Mystic Falls was the most peaceful place in the world, and Damon's favorite animals were butterflies. There weren't dead and missing people all over the place, and it wasn't a wonder there still were inhabitants in the small city.

But after all that, Alaric only wanted to hurt Damon as much as he had been when the bastard had broken his neck for the sole reason he felt the urge to drain Bill Forbes of his blood.

“You know what, it isn't even worth talking to you about it. You have no right to worry about me now, and I have half a mind to come back with a flamethrower and use it against you. Of course, I won't do it, because even if I wouldn't feel any remorse, I'd still hate myself afterwards since I can't freaking stop to love you, you bastard!”

The hunter took a deep breath, cast a last glance at Damon before moving to leave.

Their eyes met. A common look in the eyes, the feeling they were hooked upon the other's, the tearing sensation when they finally forced their eyes to move past the other's glance.

“You don't come near me, you don't talk to me, you just keep your mouth shut if we ever happen to be in the same room.”

And with those words, Alaric left Damon alone in the library.

The hunter went back to the Gilbert home. He didn't want to see anyone but he still had to make sure the kids were alright, after all, he was Jeremy's legal guardian. And he knew, even if he didn't feel like it, that meeting people was way better than going into self-imposed exile in his flat.

The last thing he needed was to dwell on Damon's stupidity.

Elena was there, but she was preparing to leave. When she saw the teacher, she went and patted him on the arm, not daring to hug him, because they weren't close enough in age to do that without it being awkward, not willing to say anything, because there was no need to ask, it was obvious.

“Do you want to be left alone?”

Ric considered the offer of solitude, but didn't respond. Instead, he looked at her and at the bag she was holding.

“It's your house, you know.”

The young woman frowned, then her eyes followed his to the bag and she understood.

“Oh. No, no, I wasn't planning to leave, though I can go and sleep at Caroline's or Bonnie's if you think you'd be better off alone...”

“Don't. If anything, it's me who should go back to my apartment. I'm not chasing you out of your house because Damon's is insane and a first class bastard.”

“You're staying there unless you don't want to, Ric. Now, about the bag, I'm going to see Bonnie. Did I tell you about what happened yesterday with my pendant? Yes? Well, she's going to look into it; apparently it's a very old magical object, insanely powerful and all, and she needs a lot of candles, more than what she has at home, as well as salt and other things...”

Well, it was one way as good as any other to get his mind off of his new demise.

“Can I tag along?”

Elena shrugged. She knew why he was asking, and if he didn't want to talk about it, then the best next thing was certainly not to think about it.

“Come if you want. But I warn you, Bonnie's going to do witchy things, and you'll see a levitating pendant or something like that, but you won't understand a thing of what she'll be doing. Fascinating at first, but it gets frustrating after a while.”

That wasn't a problem. Hell, he certainly could do with a bit of a magic show without explanations. Right now, he didn't want to think at all, because the thoughts could slide back to his least favorite subject of conversation in the twinkling of an eye without his authorization. A subject with raven hair and ice-blue eyes.

“I'm coming. Can you wait, I don't know, ten minutes? I just want to see if everything is back into shape. You never know, with magic, and I'm hurting so much I don't think I'd even notice if I was bleeding my guts out.”

The young woman gave the teacher a worried look, but he ignored it. She told him she'd wait by the entrance door, and Alaric went upstairs, to the bathroom.

Making sure he had locked the door, he carefully removed his shirt and turned his back to the mirror, same as back then, after a werewolf had killed him, his second death. This time, though, he had a good enough idea of what he'd see where the pain was so terrible.

Ric somehow managed to look at the back of his left shoulder in the mirror.

As expected.

The skin around his star-shaped scar was red and itching, and the scar itself was turgid on a small zone, on three of the eight points. Swollen, veinous, scarlet skin was bulging around a scar that was letting out small drops of blood, looking ready to burst open anytime, and he didn't like it.

Three points of a eight-pointed star. Three deaths, too.

Wasn't it too much of a coincidence? And if it wasn't, what did it mean exactly? That he had used three deaths out of eight? That once the whole scar would be that way, the seal that was really this scar wouldn't take any more magic playing with his life and deaths?

A light touch of his fingers on the sore scar was enough to make him hiss in pain. So, knowing already he would regret it, but not for long, Alaric bent upon the bathtub and took a deep breath before doing the unthinkable.

Freezing water poured on the swollen skin, drawing tiny blood drops out of an already damaged scar, hammering with coldness a shoulder that felt like it was going to break into pieces. The hunter gnashed his teeth so hard it was painful, and yet he paid it no mind, because what was going on in his mind and his shoulder was painful enough as it was.

He forced himself to stay still half a minute before turning off the water.

Ric carefully dried his wet shoulder, grimacing each time the towel and the sore skin came into contact. He put his shirt back on, buttoned it, hoping no one would notice the redness on his neck.

Finally the teacher looked at his reflection in the mirror, and grunted at the sight.

He looked whiter than Dam... than a vampire he would not name, except for the skin of his nape, horrendously crimson.

When he got back downstair, Elena was eyeing him warily, as if wondering when he'd explode.

The young woman was the one to drive to Bonnie's house. It was late, or maybe early, they weren't sure, but they didn't feel like sleeping, and they knew from experience that when magic was involved, it was best to gather as much information as possible, maybe even act upon it, before it could all blow up to their face.

They knocked on the door, and Caroline was the one to open it, a smile on her lips.

“Come in, but don't try and go in the circles Bonnie drew with chalk.”

 


	23. Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't make promises, because I feel I might not keep my word. But I'll try to end this part before the end of the year.

As Alaric walked in the room, he saw that indeed, the young witch was standing in the middle of larges circles drawn with chalk on the floor, the offending pendant in her cupped hands. All furnitures had been either pushed against the walls or even put away. The windows were wide open, but the curtains had been drawn to let in the less light possible.

Three large circles on the floor, three lines of chalk circling the teenager, three white paths drawn on the dark wood. What were they for? He had no idea. But the hunter was used to be in pain because of magical things, so he kept away. He remembered too well the effect a barrier had had on him back then, when Jenna had been taken away for Klaus' ritual and Damon...

Eitherway, he hadn't a good history with magic, it tended to hurt him through the seal, and he wasn't eager to be hurt, even less so shortly after dyi...

No matter. He'd stay clear from the magic circles.

Elena motioned for him to sit next to her and Caroline, on the floor, so he complied.

“What is it about, exactly?”

The young woman looked at Bonnie, letting her answer the question. The witch pinched the pendant between two fingers, holding it for them to see.

“When I tried to find out why the pendant had burnt Elena the other day, I saw some images, amongst which Stefan's face. But, the thing that held my attention was that I saw him twice. Possibly where he was at the time... and another time he held it, since he's the one who gave it to Elena as a present. That was my hint: this is not just any pendant, it had some magical properties, or maybe it was once worn by a powerful witch or wizard, I don't know. What is certain is that it has kept parts of its past in itself... And I intend to discover as much as I can about it. We had enough surprises with bewitched jewelry.”

And with that, the teenager gave a pointed look to Alaric, who moved his hand to cover the ring that had already saved his life thrice. He wouldn't say it had been a pleasant surprise to find out about the ring, but it had more to do with the fact he had had to be brought back to life, hence he had been dead, killed by a supernatural creature. All in all, he was rather thankful for the “bewitched jewelry”, since it was the reason he was still alive.

But he could see the girl's point.

If rings that can bring back the victims of supernatural attacks, if rings that allows vampires to walk under the sun, if rings that caused anyone with the Falkenbach seal to hurl away in pain existed, there surely were, out there, magical pendants that could do harm to a young and defenceless girl such as Elena. It was best to know than to guess, that maybe, they wouldn't all die in terrible suffering because of the pendant.

One was never too cautious.

Caroline's eyes, dead set on the pendant, squinted a bit as she cocked her head to the left.

“You'll do a hocus-pocus thing and it will show you its past?”

Ric saw Elena contain a chuckle as Bonnie rolled her eyes.

“Hocus-pocus it won't be, Caroline. I don't do hocus-pocus, my grandmother didn't do hocus-pocus, and I don't think any self-respecting witch or wizard would do hocus-pocus even with their lives on the line. What I'm going to do is calling to the forces of nature and using them to approach the pendant's own magic, hoping it will resonate and give me other images, maybe sounds too, and, if I'm really lucky, fragments of the past.”

Caroline huffed at the response to her question, but said nothing.

Bonnie, gesturing to the lines on the floor, explained these were wards, as Alaric had expected, but specific ones. The first circle on the outside was keeping vampires and other undead things from getting to her while she was in it. The second one was for inhuman-but-living-supernatural beings, like a werewolf. The last ward kept human-but-supernatural beings out, including doppelgangers, witches and cursed men. The barriers would stop anything coming from one of those beings. Bonnie, standing in there, was completely shut out of the supernatural world herself excepted.

It wasn't that the young woman feared an attack while she'd do her thing with the pendant. More like, she knew there would be a huge amount of magic released if she manaded to go into resonance with the piece of jewelry, and the wards would keep the magic in as it'd keep it out. She certainly didn't want an enormous wave of unknown magic left to hit Mystic Falls because of her actions.

In other words, Caroline was not to cross the first line under any circumstance, and Elena wasn't to go further than the second one even if her friend started to cry in pain or agony, since, anyway, they wouldn't be able to, and, secondly, it might backfire on them.

Bonnie gave a meaningfull glance at the man sitting next to her friends, not having forgotten about last time in the least. She had strong suspicions about Ric, and there was just no way she was wrong, not with how she had reacted to the touch of his skin. Human or not, she couldn't honestly say, but the teacher certainly wouldn't be able to go through the third layer of wards.

As she looked at him, wondering quietly how he was coping with his last temporary death, she noticed he was listening her explanations a bit to intently to be honest, as if he was trying not to think about something. Not surprising, considering how he had died.

There really was no hope for the bloody vampire...

It reminded her of the feeling she had had when she had tended to the man's wounds, not long before, the feeling that had given it all away. Bonnie still had no idea what the teacher was, but she knew it wasn't something pretty.

When in contact with a witch, she could feel a sort of connection, something from nature itself, but also something benevolent. With Elena, it was just a strange feeling, as if she was an oddity of nature, but not something utterly wrong or evil. Simply odd, unexplained, but approved by nature. A doppelganger, so to say. Things became unpleasant with werewolves, for they gave off that wild feeling, natural, sure, but dangerous too. And of course, the vampires. With those ones, things were just ugly. Dead. Yes, that was it, they gave off death.

But Alaric Saltzman, it had been completely unexpected.

The man was her history teacher, for God's sake! A kind and compassionate man, unless he was out hunting bastard vampires / werewolves / hybrids / every-freaking-monster-too-happy-to-oblige-and-murder-innocent-people-existing. She knew he could be lethal, if it came to it.

But still.

There was something off about the feeling she had had.

Something that tasted a bit like death, but not the same as vampires' death. Something more frightening. Something terrible, under the guise of respectabily.

A monster in a human skin, ready to rise if ordered to, but a tamed monster, obeying every single move of its master, the man itself, the human skin, in a way.

Something like fright. Or dread.

Bonnie sighed, and went back to her preparations.

She'd find out what Alaric was hiding sooner or later.

Said teacher was now ignoring Caroline's attemps at comfort with all his might. The vampire teenager was insistent, though, and an annoying voice in the back of his mind had started nagging at him, whispering intently he'd better listen, for if the girl wasn't good at listening to people, her advices on the other hand were quite often accurately given. But for now, he'd rather wallow in self-pity, since you know, it's the best way to deal with your lover killing you. Twice.

“Come one, you have to talk about it.”

No he didn't.

“Professoooor...”

Now that wasn't going to earn her any favor.

“Mr Saltzman, talk to me...”

No.

“Alaric...”

Insidious girl, she was going to get him to talk, if only so that she'd stop that unbearable prattle.

“Ric... You will talk to me...”

Never.

“Trust in me... Just in me... Shut your eyes and trust in me...”

The teacher would have spun on his heels if he had been standing, but as he was sitting, he simply turned his head quick enough for the blond girl to hear a sickening crackle of his neck. But frankly, right then, Ric didn't care about creaking and damaged joints. He watched out for any form of compulsion, after all, one was never too cautious, and Caroline had just quoted Kaa, so he didn't feel safe at all and was totally right to be paranoid. Wait, no, that one was actually because of the hainous betrayal he had been faced with only hours before...

“What the hell was the _Jungle Book_ quote for?!”

“Ah! I got you to answer, finally. See, I told you I would. So, now, let's talk about your murderous boyfriend who tried to kill my father and succeeded in killing you.”

Alaric had a better idea, though.

“Let's not talk about the bloody bastard.”

Caroline only arched an eyebrow and looked back at Bonnie and Elena, who were putting salt and candles here and there in the room while she was torturing the history teacher. Why the long faces? Someone had to do it, and she was the best for that. No other reason, she swore.

Seeing that her two friends were well on their way to de done and go on with the witchy things, Caroline realized she had to hurry up or the teacher's attention would escape her grasp. She wasn't going to let that happen, not after all the work she had done to get it.

“The bloody bastard must be sulking at the boarding house, right?”

“Maybe. Don't know, don't care.”

“Liar. You wouldn't be sulking too if you didn't care.”

Ric rolled his eyes, knowing she was right and still unwilling to admit it.

“So you consider that my lack of caring is a proof of my sulking that in itself is a proof of my caring?”

Caroline nodded, looking more serious and smug than disturbed by the strange way this discussion was going. If the teacher wanted to deny it, it was his choice only. Not hers.

“Now, listen, either you can go on hating Damon, or you can go to him, hand him his sorry ass on a silver platter and spat on him, and then try to beat into his poor excuse of a brain that. One. Does. Not. Kill. On. A. Whim.”

Alaric smiled a weak smile, knowing full well such a beating would have results only for a few weeks at best. Damon had lived too long doing whatever he wanted, killing whoever he wanted, for the habit to be broken so easily. Yet, for a short moment, he allowed himself to dream he could change the vampire.

The weak smile turned into one of sarcasm.

He had allowed himself to dream, once. Dreams of a family, despite his cursed bloodline. Dreams of love, despite his utter lack of luck in life. Dreams of peace, despite his name and his past.

Dreams.

Only dreams.

Nothing more than dreams.

The teacher turned to his student, and his smile changed once more.

A smile of surrender.

“There's no need to try and fetch me a happy ending, Caroline. My life has been dictated by my blood and name, and never have I been able to escape those. It won't change with hope. I know. I tried it before. And still here I am, surrounded by darkness and misfortune yet again. There's no need to fight against it. My fate had been sealed the day I was born as a Saltzman.”

Caroline was about to protest, thinking he was dramatizing a bit.

But she didn't.

A loud, hurt, frightened scream came from the middle of the room, from the middle of the circles, and the hunter and the vampire turned to the screaming witch in the circles.

Bonnie had fallen on her knees, blood running on her face from her nostrils and eyes, but she wasn't moving. The pendant in her hands was levitating in a sickly white light.

Elena tried to push her way into the wards of the third circles, but every time she only ended up cast aside. Caroline tried too, but the first barrier thrown her away too.

Alaric was watching the third ward silently.

He put forth his left hand.

 


	24. The only one bloody enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe me if I said I hadn't even planned to get Ric in such a state? The story just got a mind of its own, I tell you! The idea popped into my mind, and then I was like, Oh great, I can make him suffer even more!, So I did it.
> 
> Anyway, the cat was let out of the bag.

Why his left hand, one might wonder.

Well, it was simple, really.

His left hand, because he was right-handed, and if by some odd twist of bad luck his coming into contact with Bonnie's barrier ended up with a lot of blood and pain and mistreatment, he'd rather lose his left hand than his right one. See, very pragmatic. And yes, there's no need to feign ignorance, it was completely possible that he'd suffer for this attempt at rescuing the young witch.

So Alaric's fingers came into contact with the third ward.

He'd have screamed, if that would have helped.

He reached out for the now inconscious girl slowly, fearing any kind of haste would see him cast away as Elena and Caroline had been.

The scar on his left shoulder was aflame with pain, and the hunter was pretty certain the redness of his skin wasn't the only redness around it anymore. It felt like the cicatricial tissue was bursting open everywhere on the scar. He wasn't exactly sure he was bleeding again, but he didn't doubt much either. Sure, the blood gurgling out of it was hot, but he couldn't feel it, and that for two reasons.

The first one was, Alaric felt completely numb everywhere else on his back, saturated with the pain from the scar itself, the burning flesh, the itching edges of the wound, the throbbing in his skin... So he certainly wasn't going to feel even a flow of blood dyeing his shirt crimson.

The other reason was that even the pain from the reopened scar seemed dull compared to what his fingers were experiencing.

The first centimeters had been relatively easy, with only minor cuts apparing at the tips as he forced his way inside the wards. He suspected his ability to walk in despite his nature, that the barrier was definitely aware of, given its reaction to his intrusion, had much to do with the negating effect the seal carved in his flesh years ago had on magic of all kind.

It didn't make it easy for all that.

It hadn't taken long. Just a few centimeters, until his hand was completely in.

And then, outbursts.

The minor cuts on his fingers weren't so minor anymore. Ric had now several large and bleeding gashes running up to his wrist, and the pressure on his bones was so high he wondered if it was enough to break them.

Still, in the end, Ric let out a scream when his nails were torn apart and ripped from his fingers.

He stopped breathing for a second, but finally grabbed, not the witch laying on the bloodied floor, but the pendant, still hovering above her motionless form. The ominous jewelry stopped glowing altogether, and Bonnie stopped bleeding so much at the same time.

Yet, his hand was still being torn into shreds, since the wards had nothing to do with the pendant, and if he didn't do anything right now right here, he'd have no hand left within a short time.

So, still holding onto the thrice damned jewelry, Ric grabbed the unconscious witch and dragged her out of her wards. She looked bad, but not threatingly bad, and when one lived the life he or Elena for example lived, it meant the world.

Letting himself fall onto the floor, the hunter watched as Caroline runned to her friend and forced her to drink a bit of her blood, so that she'd heal whatever the pendant had done to her exactly.

After a short while, Elena looked at Alaric, meaning to thank him thoroughly for rescuing Bonnie when she and Caroline hadn't been able to, but then she spotted a glint of red on the floor. The young woman blinked, suddenly worried, and she remembered how hard going through the barrier had been to her somewhat-illegitimate-stepfather. But he was human, so surely...

She'd think about that particular aspect of the day's mystery once she'd be sure Alaric was alright.

Making her way away from the not-so-talkative-and-very-unconscious-witch, Elena joined the hunter to check on him.

That's when the doppelganger saw it.

The pool of blood, and the bloody forearm. The lack of nails, that usually talked of chinese torture. The white of his face, as if he had been drained of all his blood...

“Caroline, come here and fix him! Quick!”

The vampire glanced at her unexpectedly agitated friend and at the hunter sitting on the floor next to her, holding his left arm with his right one, and wincing slightly. With how Bonnie had bled only minutes before, she couldn't tell if he was bleeding to with only the scent, but the man was downright white as chalk.

Caroline checked Bonnie was still alive, and joined the two others.

“What's the mat... What the hell happened?!”

She was eyeing the bloodied limb with a bewildered look on her face, still unclear about how they had gone from _The Jungle Book_ to Bonnie unconscious and hurt and Alaric even more wounded.

The young vampire didn't wait for the answer to her question, though, and just bit her wrist, before forcing it against Ric's mouth, who only complied, not even backing away from the disgusting taste of blood. Erm, disgusting for a human, of course.

She found it odd how the man was simply accepting it, without any reaction, as if it had no taste at all. She found it odd he wasn't complaining much, despite the blood loss, despite the wounds that one minute before were eagerly pouring blood on the floor. She found it odd he had been injured in the first place.

Alaric held his breath as he watched the wounds disappear, but not the blood he had lost, making him look like a mad killer from a horror movie or something, covered in blood from head to toes. Not that it was the first time.

Of course, a mouthful of vampire blood could only heal so much, and his nails were still missing, but well, who was he to complain? The torn skin where the said nails should have been had healed, and that was better than nothing. Now, his hand just looked really weird, with no nail and all, but he'd put on some band-aids and no one would notice a thing.

Elena and Caroline waited a bit for him to get better, and then started assaulting him with questions.

Questions he'd rather not answer, but this time, he couldn't see an escape route. So he stayed silent, thinking of what to say, a thoughtful look on his face.

Someone coughed not far away, and they all turned to see Bonnie spitting a bit of blood.

“You're alright?!”

In a flash, a frantic vampire was next to her friend, and the witch tried a poor smile.

“I'll live.”

Caroline gave her an tissue to wipe away the blood she had on her face, and Bonnie took it gratefully. The teenage vampire helped her to the sink, where they made numerous failed attempts to get the witch clean of every red stain possible. It took a while, Bonnie's coordination being a bit shaken for now, but in the end they managed.

When the two went back to Elena and Alaric, still sitting on the floor, the witch looked really soaked, but not bloody in the least, and that counted as an improvement.

As she sat down too, Bonnie's gaze fell on her doppelganger friend, still holding onto the hunter's arm as if her life, or, more likely, his, was on the line, and as a consequence, she ended up staring at the blood-soaked history teacher sitting in her living room.

“I guess I owe you a thanks.”

It was clear he had been the one to pull her out, because he was the only one bloody enough to have done that. And the young witch was pretty sure most of the blood was not hers.

How he had passed her wards, she wasn't sure. But it confirmed her doubts. He wasn't human, or, at least, not only human, or he wouldn't have been in this state. Alaric Saltzman had overcome her barrier, and the price to his action had come at a high price. How lucky they had had a vampire ready to play blood bank... which, in itself, was a pretty ironic sentence, by the way.

The hunter waved a “It's nothing” at the witch, and everyone got to admire left hand with no nail. For a moment, Bonnie thought she was going to puke.

Elena stared at her friend for a long time, trying to gauge if she was really okay, and apparently she came to a divided conclusion.

“Did you see anything?”

Bonnie nodded, thankful for the change of conversation.

“The pendant has kept in its magic every supernatural being that ever touched it. I had seen many already, when a woman touched it, early fifteenth century according to her clothes, give or take, and it just blew up in my mind, kind of...”

The witch gazed into nothingness for a second, then shrugged and continued talking.

“The first possessor was a witch, she's the one who made it. A blond woman, powerful enough, I believe... Then I saw several children, and I'm not sure, but I think we know two of them. Klaus and Elijah. Maybe she was from their village, I don't know. One of the children took the pendant at the woman's death, and at that time she had become an adult woman. She kept it for centuries, but sometimes she let someone else take it, maybe only to get a look, or because they needed it for some spell. The others... I've seen you, Elena, but also Katherine, and at least three other women with your face. I guess Katherine wasn't the first doppelganger... I've seen Elijah and Klaus adult, I've seen Stefan, several times, and, if I didn't know any better, through the whole millenium. And then I saw this woman...”

Bonnie was now staring intently at Alaric.

The hunter didn't like that at all.

“I don't know why, but when this woman took it, the pendant... it sort of died. As if the magic had disappeared, just while she held it. And it didn't like that I got to see that. Maybe it has to do with a weakness, after all, the blasted thing almost has a consciousness of its own.”

Ricrefrained from shifting under the witch's suspiscious-though-not-aggressive glance. Why was she looking at him like that already?

The teacher was sure he was going to regret it sooner or later, but he asked.

“Was there anything else you can say about that woman who caused the pendant to black out?”

“Actually, there is.”

Bonnie pointed at him.

“When you grabed it, it blacked out too. Then it stopped its fighting with my mind and magic.”

Great, Ric thought. Now, he had the intrigued looks of Caroline and Elena to add to Bonnie's suspicious one.

“This woman, she was one of your kind, wasn't she?”

A puzzled doppelganger and a wondering vampire exchanged a look, turned a bit to look at their witch friend, and went back to staring at Alaric. Elena was the first to ask, half-believing her friend couldn't be wrong, almost waiting for the moment the history teacher would admit to being an alien. After all, they already had vampires, witches and wizards, werewolfes and doppelgangers, they surely could afford an alien. Even if it sounded ridiculous.

“'One of your kind?'”

Plutonian, certainly. Or maybe he was from outside their stellar system. Would they have been able to have a baby, Jenna and him, if he was an alien, and if Jenna hadn't died? Interesting question. Now, what kind of being would the baby have been born as?

Noticing her thoughts were going astray, Elena brushed them aside, but didn't stop arching an eyebrow at Alaric for all that.

The teacher looked unwilling to answer at first, but he finally decided he had nothing better to do than to speak the truth about the Saltzmans, the Falkenbachs, and a lot of other things.

“I'm a cursed man.”

The three teenage girls / vampire / doppelganger / witch / utimate-supernatural-feminin-team-with-a-knack-to-guilt-trip-you-into-doing-anything-they-wanted didn't say a word but went on staring at him expectantly.

So he told them everything about the Falkenbachs, he told them about the bank, and in the end, they only told him it wasn't his fault if his family was one hell of a cursed one.

“Well, I know, but that wasn't what they had been thinking when I went back to high school...”

“They knew?”

“My face, though hidden and bloodied, had been in seven newspapers or so. Those who knew me well enough recognized me. Everyboby knew, but no one would say anything. Ever. Not with my family being who they were.”

And so, the secret wasn't one anymore. Oh such a bitter thought...

 


	25. Something amiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After 3x09

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be happy, I hadn't intended to finish this today!

Alaric closed the door behind him, and went to sit on the nearest chair.

Silence.

He looked around. Nothing unexpected. Not a surprise. After all, why should there be something unexpected in his own flat? Well, besides the fact that Klaus still had access to it, must have invited his real body in while he was playing the body scrounger with the hunter's. Really, the only thing good with vampires was that they couldn't block the door with their foot when you didn't want to let them in. But no, why would the Great Niklaus the Maniac play by the rules? Uh? He wouldn't.

And he hadn't.

So, if the Original Hybrid had the mind to come and visit, he could very well come in, and, try as he might, Alaric was nowhere near able to deal with the unsufferable but hellishly strong monster. Not strong enough, and not in the mood, too.

Ric scowled at no one in particular, since, you know, he was all alone and miserable, and grabbed the bottle of bourbon and the glass that had taken permanent residency on his dining table.

Klaus was back in town.

Admitedly, the bastard had nothing to do with Alaric, so it was unlikely he'd come to see him, kill him, have a chat, whatever the freak might do. But it wasn't about himself that the hunter was worried.

Klaus was back, Stefan was completely brainwashed by anger, blood, and compulsion, the number of supernatural deaths had again gone up, Elena had almost burned alive in an unexplained event, and the girl was considered an “asset” by an unkillable psychopathic hybrid, another Original Vampire was walking free under the sun, one of his student had been turned into an hybrid, and he had had to deal with a ghost invasion of some kind, as well as viking paintings in a cave to translate. There certainly was more, but right now, right here, Alaric didn't want to think about it.

It was only truer when “more” had raven hair and blue eyes.

Sure, he and Damon were on speaking terms once again, but not like before. It wasn't the same as during the past months, it wasn't even the same as when they were only friends. They couldn't go back to being friends, not after they had shared so much more, not when they still both loved each others. They couldn't go back to being lovers, not even when Damon had apologized. Not for now, at least.

So both were something again, but what exactly, Ric didn't know.

Bloody supernatural! If not for it, in a world where there wasn't anything that couldn't be explained by science, in a world where Damon was human, where he wasn't cursed, where Elena wasn't constantly in danger because of what she was born as, where people simply didn't die with no blood in their body...

The hunter's facial expression froze, and suddenly, he felt...

Relieved? Or angry? He wasn't sure.

The man looked at his left hand while he used the right one to take a sip of alcohol.

There was no reminder of what had happened, not so long ago, days only, at Bonnie Bennett's. His skin was perfectly normal, he hadn't a scratch left from the wounds he had gained while saving the girl. No reminder, except that he had band-aids all around the tips of his fingers. Under the band-aids, no nails.

Yet another wound to thanks the supernatural for.

The scar on his left shoulder had been throbbing for days, after his last death. He had not slept more than two hours a night since then.

Damon could apologize, it wasn't a difficult thing to do, the only thing needed was for him to act like a decent person once in a while, and not like I'm-a-bloody-Salvatore-why-should-I-apologize-?. There was no pain, no bounds preventing him from opening his mouth, and simply, oh so easily, say the words.

But no.

It hadn't even been a “I'm sorry”.

Why had he accepted, or even acknowledged, such piss poor apologies?

Love. What a joke. Love, from and for a vampire? Ridiculous.

Beasts. All of them.

The hunter threw his empty glass away in an angry motion.

There was no sound of breaking.

“Someone is in a bad mood.”

The hunter felt there was something wrong with him, because he didn't even tense when he heard the voice. The bloody voice of Klaus. The Hybrid had come to him, for whatever reason he might have, and was now standing in his flat, and the hunter wasn't even apprehensive. Disgruntled, at most. Or maybe uncaring would be the better word to describe how he felt.

How strange. He wasn't even slightly drunk, he had only had one glass of bourbon, and yet there he was, as if in a drunken stupor, that is, a Falkenbach drunken stupor, which was infinitely more dangerous than a normal drunken stupor, for it tended to leave the common sense he had in place of human feelings at the door. Dangerous for who, was open to discussion.

The oddity struck him as he stood up and turned to face his unwanted visitor, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

“I was killed by my best friend not long ago, I'm entitled to be angry.”

Best to keep this about friendship, and nothing else. It wasn't Klaus business, after all.

He had also left out the part about how many worries and problems the hybrid had arisen by coming back to Mystic Falls, feeling it wouldn't be wise to talk about it, and anyway, Klaus was surely aware of it already.

The hybrid took a seat at the other side of the table, and the hunter offered him a drink without thinking much about it, out of habit, and at the same time, wondering what it would be like if the bourbon had been poisoned with wolfsbane or vervein. A shame it may have altered the taste.

Klaus looked at the man sitting in front of him with mild interest.

“I was killed by my own father when I turned, and after that I've been stabbed with a white oak ash dagger trice by one of my brothers or by my sister. I can't see what you're complaining about.”

The hunter didn't react in anyway, and Klaus found that strange. The man was sitting there, waiting, watching him, watching out even for the tiniest move, but he wasn't reacting.

“What have you come here for?”

“I like your kind. They're interesting. Ever met Hans?”

The hunter snorted at that.

“He came not long ago. Nearly killed me. Then he was reunited with Gal, and they're gone on a second honeymoon or something like that. I have their phone number, if you want. But if he doesn't hate you anymore, I wouldn't let him anywhere near this brother of yours that played him anytime soon.”

Klaus winced at the mention of Kol's stupidity.

“Right. He got Galswinthe back, that's better than nothing.”

The hunter only shrugged, and Klaus could tell he didn't care, or at least, he didn't at the moment. It was so unlike the man he had learned the Falkenbach to be, that the hybrid couldn't help but grow suspicious. Not of the man's behavior, because he somehow trusted it to be honest, but of the man's state of mind. It was like there was something amiss, and he didn't know what, because he didn't know the hunter so well. And Klaus didn't like being left in the shadows.

The man looked up at him once again, and the Original found himself staring at those eyes once again. Falkenbach eyes. Cold, uncaring, inhumane.

“What have you come here for?”

Same question, again.

“Nothing important. A fair warning, maybe.”

“I doubt anything is fair with you, your highness.”

There was sarcasm in the hunter's voice, but Klaus didn't mind. After all, it was the truth, most of the time. He did what was best for him, no matter what the consequences for the others were.

The hybrid spared a look at the bottle on the table. It was nearly empty, so maybe the man was drunk, you could never really tell with those Falkenbachs. Then again, he could see the dust-free circles in the area of the table where the bottle had been left, apparently for days. No wonder there was almost no alcohol left.

“You should clean your place more often. There's dust on your table.”

“I haven't eaten here since the last time I died. The noise at the Grill make it easier not to think.”

The noise. Not the drink. Interesting. But not what he had come for.

“Anyway, as I was saying... I've come here to warn you, and, by association, your friends. Don't try anything to oppose me, and you shall live. No matter who I kill, no matter how much your friends are suffering, if one of you tries to stop me, the deaths will be more numerous, and the suffering will be worse.”

The hunter's only answer was to stand up and take another glass to pour himself a drink.

“In short, not to expect any pity from you. Understood. Actually, it's like you came to say something we all knew already. So, why bother?”

“Because I know the like of you. You hope, and when hope is gone, you don't know it until you die. I'd like to keep my Petrova doppelganger alive, so that I can create hybrids, and for that, it's easier if I don't have to worry about you getting her killed while trying to save her. If you obey, there will be casualties, I don't deny it. But you don't, and you won't be there to see how much more despair will be caused.”

And Klaus, saying that, had his most chearful tone, the one he habitually used to make death threats. When he wasn't too angry, of course. Though, he rarely had to make death threats while angry, because the ones he could have threatened were usually already dead.

The hybrid was about to leave, ignoring the hunter's reactions, be it protest or begging, as he liked to do to mark his word, meaning there was no open door for negociation.

But he didn't pass the treshold.

The man behind him, the man whose reaction he had intended to ignore, at least in appearances, the man hadn't said anything. He hadn't moved to foolishly try and punch him, or any other kind of stupid behavior.

Not that he had expected something like that from a Falkenbach. Falkenbachs acted only when there was nothing to lose, be it because everything had already been lost, or because they could only succeed in improving the situation, even one bit. Well, sane ones did, at least. Klaus wasn't sure Alaric Saltzman was sane anymore.

The man hadn't frozen in shock either. Those kind of things happened, from time to time. Unlikely, with someone like the hunter, but possible.

The man was laughing.

And it wasn't a nervous laugh, nor a laughter of madness. It was something cold.

Surprised with himself, but more surprised with the situation, Klaus turned back to the man standing in the middle of the appartment, laughing a mirthless laugh.

The hunter had put his glass back on the table, and was looking at him.

“You know the like of us? Interesting. What I wonder about, however, is what you know of the like of me. Last time we... spent time together, I wasn't available, if I remember correctly. Even if I'm as cursed as Hans, we're not the same person, and it can be said of any other member of my family that you might have encountered. So excuse me if when you say 'the like of you', I think mainly of Elena, Damon, and the others. I don't consider you're talking about me at all, you see.”

Klaus' eyes squinted as he listened. He was a bit puzzled by the man's attitude. It was so unlike what he had understood of Alaric Saltzman, it was unnerving.

“Then what do you consider your possible course of action confronted to such threats?”

The hunter smiled, but as for his laugh, there was nothing behind his smile.

“Mine? I'd kill whoever dared to utter such threats and destroy all evidences, body included, before they got the time to go back and order someone to avenge them in the worst possible way if needed. But you're no ordinary author threat, and it just so happens I can't kill you. So I won't do that. The question being, what will I do? I don't know yet. You'll have to wait and see.”

Klaus, of course, managed to appear as if there was nothing disturbing about the whole visit, and left. He was long gone when the hunter, his scar aching like hell, muttered between his teeth:

“Alaric's course of action, however, you knew it well. Lucky he's not available now either.”

 


	26. Quick, harsh, painful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x10

“ _I had warned you not to fight back or there'd be consequences.”_

The phone call had been brief, laconic, and utterly unhelpful, since Alaric had no recollections of such a conversation with the Original Hybrid, but at least, it had been enough for the hunter to rush to the entrance door and see Jeremy standing still in the middle of the road, a car coming at him at full speed. It had been enough of a warning for him to realize that said consequences were imminent. It may have been enough to prevent one death, though at the cost of another one.

Problems had arisen long ago, Alaric had to admit, but that he'd have never guessed. Tyler, completely and supernaturaly brainwashed by Klaus, and Jeremy, compulsed to get himself killed.

So Ric had run, and he had seen the car coming closer.

So Alaric had pushed the teenage boy out of the way, and he had seen the car coming closer to him.

So the hunter had stopped, and he had seen the car touch his clothes, only seconds before he had felt it hitting hard against his body.

It had been quick, but the pain had been terrible, and for him at least, it had been too long.

Alaric felt it for too long, and yet, it was only happening, now.

His legs broke. Simple as that, when the car came first into contact with his body, an aggressive, hainous contact. Broken. Quick, harsh, painful.

Three ribs broke. His legs having given away, he had fallen against the front of the car, and the calander had pressed down three of his ribs, and the broken ribs had pierced his guts. Broken. Quick, harsh, painful.

His spine broke. The impact had sent him into the air, and after that he had landed on his back, on one side of the still moving car, and had as soon been thrown on the road as the vehicle went away. Broken. Quick, harsh, painful.

His right arm broke. He had landed on it, once on the hard ground of the road, but really, with everything else, he couldn't care much, even if such considerations wouldn't alter the truth. Broken. Quick, harsh, painful.

His neck broke. After that, he had no idea. He was dead, after all. He was broken, too. But he could say one thing: it had been quick, harsh, and painful.

Dead.

He was dead, once again.

Alaric got up on his feet, and wondered where he was.

He recognized the place in itself, after all, Mystic Falls wasn't large a city enough for him not to know where he was. Actually, he was somewhere East from the Gilbert home, and he could go back there in one hour. He started walking.

Make that two hours. Because he wasn't feeling well, as if his body was a wreck.

The teacher looked down, and he couldn't honestly say he liked what he saw.

Two ribs out of the three broken ones were protruding out of his torso. He was leaving a trail of blood behind him. And his legs were bent in an unnatural angle, as was one of his arms. There was an odd twinge in the small of his back and in his neck, too, as if they weren't in their right position.

And the worst, he wasn't feeling so bad. Bad, sure, but not as bad as he should have. After all, he was currently walking with broken legs, spine and neck, and a mess instead of a chest.

He stopped when he heard a voice, and turned to see a blond woman, sitting on a bench not far from him. He could say she was with him in here, wherever “here” was, unlike the other people he had crossed path with so far, who seemed to be alive, unlike him, and not seeing him, and that at least wasn't surprising. If living beings could see ghosts, situations-with-magic-pendants put aside, Ric was certain he'd have seen one by now.

“ _I can help you with that, Alaric.”_

The woman's voice, as herself, came from another realm, or that was what he thought at the moment. She was one of the dead of the place, and that was why her voice sounded so strange, near and far away at the same time.

Eitherway, as he was here, amongst the supernatural dead people of Mystic Falls, everything felt strange. Other dead persons were there too, like the woman, but unlike her they didn't seem to distinguish one another. It was as if every single soul jailed in there, the Other Side, as Anna had called it, were in their private prison, and could only perceive shadows of the other prisoners. He was no exception.

Another thing was that he couldn't hear the silence anymore. In this place, there was no silence. Only a strange and undefinable sound echoed forever and ever, because that unnerving sound was silence in this world of shadows.

Ric looked at the woman, still sitting, and he could have sworn he knew her from before. From where and when was another question.

How could she navigate between one's shadows and anothers', how could, while being dead just like himself, how could she even talk to him?

“And what do you propose to do about those?”

The woman smiled genially.

“ _Just push your ribs back into place, and it will do wonders.”_

The teacher complied, suspicious, but soon noticed the wounds were closing, even though he still felt something was wrong. It wasn't painful, for he'd have been in agony before if he had been able to feel pain in this dead state, but it wasn't right either.

“ _Now, get your limbs back into shape too. You look ridiculous.”_

Usually, Alaric would have scowled a bit at that, but now wasn't an usual time or situation.

With his most able arm, he bent the other one until he felt the two parts of the broken bone fit. He then found out he could use it normally again, and almost eagerly went to work on his legs, spine and neck. Once finished, he walked straight again, and was certainly pleased he didn't look like a broken living doll anymore.

“It's not healed, is it?”

It didn't feel like it was, at least. Then again, he was dead, and feelings were misgiving.

The blond woman walked to him, frowning a bit.

“ _Ah. It isn't, but it should be. I guess that's because you died too many times. When you'll wake up, it will hurt a lot, and you might need to go on a journey to the hospital.”_

“You've seen others like me?”

Ric was curious, and reached out to show the ring that would bring him back amongst the living once again. Well, hopefully.

After all, she seemed to know what she was talking about.

“ _Why would you think that?”_

“How else would you know about resurrected people and their injuries?”

The woman looked lost in calculative thoughts for a second, but she soon enough got a hold of herself. She took to walk in the street, in the general direction of Elena's and Jeremy's house, her back to him, as if she didn't want him to see her facial expressions.

Alaric followed her, walking easily now, though he felt like his body, was it even a body, in this ghost reality?, was a bit too numb to be honest.

“ _What does the Other Side evoke to you, Alaric Saltzman, you cursed and thrice resurrected man?”_

The teacher didn't answer right away, considering. But when his answer came, he saw the woman tense. Perhaps she had never actually met a Falkenbach in here? Could she even speak to the other ghosts, when most of them couldn't do so between themselves?

“Home.”

Nothing to be surprised about, really, or even bitter for the matter. Death had always been his home, in some sort of a strange fashion.

Death felt like home, and he didn't care.

“ _Home it is, then. But what I meant, Alaric, is that you came here before. Thrice. And each time you died I was there to wait for you and guide you back to your for-now-dead body.”_

Thrice. The number of times he had died before this one.

“I don't remember you.”

“ _You don't, but...”_

That's when she turned around, and faced him, looking him intently in the eyes, as if searching for something, as if searching for someone in his eyes.

“ _... still, you do.”_

And it happened again.

Everything was of no interest, all of sudden.

Alaric closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he wasn't the same anymore. He was Alaric Saltzman, no mistaking it, but he wasn't “Alaric”, or “Ric”, or anyone else. He was the hunter.

He looked around, saw the twisted scenery of the Other Side, and so he looked at himself, still unsure of why he had died exactly.

Of course, he remembered what had happened to “Alaric”, but he couldn't quite believe his other self, even being much gentler than he himself was, was dumb enough to die for a teenager, even one he considered as family.

Because it was true, the hunter thought of Elena and Jeremy as of family, and he'd have thought of Jenna exactly the same. The others were a shame, monsters, the lot of them, or friends to monsters, for the humans. Shame, as much as “Alaric” was. Far too much of a sentimental, that one.

Damon... Well, the vampire was a sore spot in his reasoning.

The hunter could tell he still loved the man, behind the vampire, the man Damon Salvatore had once been, the man he had never met, to be frank, because he had been alive years before his time, but a man he could still surmise, hidden behind the monster. But if only for that, the hunter knew he couldn't, and wouldn't, bear the sight of a man he so loved being brought down to such a shame. Damon would not remain a soulless blood-sucking monster if he had a say in it.

Still, even if he knew he loved Elena and Jeremy, and Damon if he had been human, the hunter also knew his crusade was too important for him to sacrifice his life in any way. Not even to save theirs.

If he died, it'd be bringing down monsters, such as vampires and werewolves, monsters that feasted on the innocents and thought nothing of it.

“Alaric” had had no idea if the driver was supernatural or not, and though the hunter could tell he was, otherwise he wouldn't be here, but simply dead alongside his other personality, he could also say “Alaric” hadn't thought twice about it. He had been ready to sacrifice himself for the teenager.

He really couldn't fathom how “Alaric”'s mind worked.

The hunter looked back at the dead witch standing not far away from him.

“Esther.”

She smiled happily, but there was no warmth in her smile. There had never been, unless she was talking about her children and her husband. Always in the past. Always as they had been before everything happened. Always as they had been when there still was humanity in their heart.

“ _So you're back, hunter.”_

He didn't flinch at the use of the nickname she had given him the first time he had died. He used to get angry, but speaking of him as “Alaric” didn't seem proper, somehow, so he had just accepted it.

Yet, he yearned for a day when he would call himself with his own name without feeling a sham. He was confident that day would come. But for now, he felt “Alaric” deserved it more than he did.

But soon enough, he'd be the real one, the stronger one, and “Alaric”, the one who was always hurt, always used, always tossed aside without even a second thought, would go to rest.

“So it seems.”

“ _Your body is waiting for you, you know?”_

“I know.”

They walked to the Gilbert house, and the hunter felt a bit sad the teenagers living in there weren't able to see how they were compromising themselves with those monsters, because they wanted to believe they were still a bit human.

But he knew the truth, and he'd make them see it, as soon as he'd have become Alaric Saltzman.

While they walked, Esther talked. She talked about how everything that had been stolen from him had been that way because of vampires. How they had to disappear, so that the world would be safer, and happier. How this reality needed men able and willing to fight for all the others.

He knew what she was hinting at, and he mostly agreed. There was only one detail he didn't agree on, and didn't tell her about.

What had robbed him of his life weren't vampires, but magic in all its forms. Curses. And witches.

 


	27. Didn't want, couldn't bear, wouldn't hear

“ _History teacher in need of a hug. Make up so that you can make out.”_

The vampire snorted at the text he had just received from Vampire Barbie. She had been harassing him with those for days, now, but each time Damon saw Alaric, he remembered the dead look in the man's eyes, and he chickened out. Not so glorious, coming from Damon Salvatore, you might say. That didn't make it any less true.

Damon rolled on his left side in his bed, and attempted to sleep, once again. Sleep was all that could get his mind off his once-but-not-anymore-because-of-his-own-damn-fault-lover, and he couldn't sleep anymore, but sure as hell he tried.

Well, there was alcohol, too, and blood, that could have helped him. But he didn't trust himself not to react the way he usually did and go on a rampage because he wasn't happy with how the story was turning out. If he did, he'd surely lose the rare friends he had made this time, a luxury he hadn't had for a long time.

The vampire wasn't ready to lose Stefan, Elena, even Caroline, not when he had already lost Alaric.

His cellphone rang once again, and Damon grunted in discontentement as he rolled back on his right side, his hand searching blindly for the damned device of hell.

If it was another text from Caroline, he'd throw it away, hoping it would break.

Opening a reluctant eye, Damon held the phone's screen near his face, and suddenly he was bolting out of bed.

He got clothed in the blink of an eye, typing Elena's number already, calling back in a hurry.

“Elena, what the hell do you mean 'Alaric is going to the hospital'?!”

“ _Jeremy was compelled, and... and there was this car... and... and...”_

The girl's voice sounded strangled, a bit distant too, as if there was something making noise behind her, and disrupting the call. It sounded an awful lot like an ambulance siren. Damon guessed she was about to break down, and calmed down a bit.

“I'm sorry, Elena, I shouldn't have screamed. Now, take a deep breath, and tell me what happened. I'm on my way.”

The vampire searched frantically for his car's key, and listened as Elena more or less managed to tell him how exactly Ric had gotten himself ran over by a car, killed in the process, resurrected as a result and packed up to the city hospital.

“ _And, I don't know, Damon, but it's taking more and more time each time for him to be... to be revived, and this time he was only partially healed. I mean, his limbs were back in place and all, but Ric still had one rib broken and pushing on his stomach, and he was bleeding from there too, and I'm really, really worried about what happens next time he dies! I... I don't want to lose him too, Damon!”_

As her observations matched his owns, the vampire paled, remembering how two of these deaths were actually his fault, and the later had been totally uncalled for. He didn't say anything about her assumption that, one way or another, the teacher would end up dying again, because he knew too well it was more than probable. With the Original Bastard in town, things could only turn out bad, and for Alaric, bad was always synonymous to dead.

The vampire did his best to comfort the young woman over the phone, once again assuring her he was on his way and would soon be there.

When he finally parked next to the hospital, Damon rushed to the reception, rushed to Ric's room, and eventually rushed to the teacher's side.

The man was still unconscious.

“Damon...”

He turned to look at Elena, who looked so distressed he was certain she was his perfect copy at the moment, even if they looked nothing alike.

“What did they say?”

“He's gonna be alright, but I think it'd be best if you handled the sheriff deputy... They know you, and they won't think twice about it if you say the accident had to do with the V word...”

The vampire frowned, and then understood.

“Ah... Yeah, Ric has been ran over by a car, it's only normal the sheriff department wants to catch the culprit... Why don't you just tell them what the car looked like, and be done with it?”

Elena's eyes darted to her silent brother, sitting moodily on a chair in the corridor, and she winced a bit.

“The thing is, they already have the car. The hybrid Klaus had... ordered to kill Jeremy stopped not far away, and waited for Ric to come back to life, and he called off the ambulance with compulsion... He was trying to get us to invite us in, and if we didn't... But in the end, Jer beheaded him. With a butcher knife. We couldn't exactly let the body just outside the door, so we moved it in the cellar before the ambulance came back.”

Damon closed his eyes, processing informations with an incredulous look on his face.

Then he turned to look at the brooding teenager outside the room.

Then he turned back to look at Elena.

“Your brother beheaded a hybrid with a butcher knife?”

The young woman nodded gravely and pointed out that the hybrid had been weakened at the time.

“Jer had wounded him with one of Ric's crossbows before that.”

“Your brother shot a hybrid with an arrow?”

She nodded again.

Damon pursed his lips, feeling the beginning of a headache.

“I see... I'll take care of your uninvited visitor's body later. Meanwhile, mind your brother. You might want to convince him to move out... To go to a sunnier, funnier place, with less Originals hell bent on killing him to make an example... I'll take care of Alaric.”

The girl looked relieved, but before leaving, she shot him a meaningful glance.

“I'll be alright. I don't think his order for me to stay away from him stands in this situation.”

But once Elena and Jeremy were gone, and the vampire found himself alone with an unconscious history teacher / all-kinds-of-monsters-hunter-because-“vampire-hunter”-was-becoming-too-specific-an-expression-for-what-he-did / cursed man / former boyfriend, Damn began to feel nervous about what was going to happen.

Ric needed help, that much was certain, but would he be willing to let the vampire help?

So Damon didn't wake the man up just now, and he simply stared at him, hesitant.

Alaric was pale, way too pale, and the vampire didn't like that. For a human, pale could be a sign of death, and for the teacher, that was exactly what it was. He had died, once again.

Once more.

Once too often.

Damon stood there, saying nothing, next to the hospital bed that held Alaric's unconscious form. He watched the man seemingly sleeping, and he wondered if there was even a chance Ric would not die once too often.

One last death.

And then Ric would disappear.

And then Ric would leave him alone.

That's when it hit him, like a slap in the face.

No matter what happened, in the end, Alaric would leave him. He'd grow old, and die, and leave him behind. And Damon had known all along, but somehow, he had forgotten on the way.

Something tumbled down in Damon's heart.

He reached for the teacher's cheeks, trembling a bit, not knowing why, yet knowing why, not so sure of anything, just that he didn't want, couldn't bear, wouldn't hear of it. His fingertips brushed lightly against Ric's face, and he felt in this single touch, all that was between them: something undescriptible, something faint, something marvelous, something incredible, something fragile, something so strong and weak at the same time, it seemed it could explode anytime, just because of this contradiction.

Alaric's skin was hot, as in alive, but cold, as in not as hot as it should have been.

And the vampire wondered if, in a way, he could get the teacher to accept, and to become colder, and completely dead, that's true, but still, more alive than ever, because being alive, wasn't it, in the end, not to be dead and buried?

Damon himself was dead, but he was far from buried, and wasn't it all that mattered?

The vampire bent over the man he loved, and, face to face, he silently asked the hunter if he loved him enough to become a prey for him.

Of course, Alaric didn't answer: he was sleeping, or unconscious, or somewhere in between.

Damon sighed, defeated.

He knew Ric wouldn't agree, or at least, not so easily, not when they were at odds with each other, not when everything was so uncertain about them. But at least, the teacher would never accuse him of asking to put away his humanity. The Falkenbach had been clear about that: he might have been human when Damon wasn't, but he was as much of a monster as the vampire was. Humanity wasn't something he could put away, at least, not the humanity a person lost when they turned. Alaric didn't have any humanity of this kind to put away.

He was a Falkenbach, and a Falkenbach couldn't put their humanity on hold. They hadn't any.

When he breathed on the teacher's face, Damon saw a shiver running down Ric's skin.

A smirk twisted his lips, and he decided to put the indecision away, for some time at least.

The Sleeping Beauty was about to wake up, and Damon, as any respectable Damon Salvatore would do, vamped out and whispered in Alaric's ear.

“This one seems unconscious. He'd certainly wouldn't care if I stole some delicious blood from him, now, would he?”

And with that, he leaned closer to the man's neck.

Suddenly, a hand was gripping his throat in a firm hold. Damon smiled widely and withdrew himself a bit, just enough to see two blue eyes staring at him as if to make a hole in his brain.

“We agreed there would be no biting without consent.”

Ah, right, that rule. But it wasn't as if they were sleeping together anymore, so how would such consent come about, now?

Anyway, it wasn't as if Damon had actually intended to take a sip.

“You're creepy. You were sleeping peacefully, and one second later, you're strangling me while watching me with wide-open eyes. I feel like I'm in a horror movie.”

“And you're a freak who drinks people's blood, and first thing I hear upon waking up is you joking about my jugular. I'm the one who can believe he's in a horror movie. And now that we stated the obvious, is there anything else you'd want to tell me, Damon?”

The fact the hunter hadn't already tried to kill him and hadn't even reminded him of his stay-away-order gave hope to the vampire, and Damon didn't need much more. He bit his lower lip, and then crushed his mouth against Ric's, forcing his kiss and his blood on the hunter.

Alaric gasped at first, surprised, but eventually relented, and responded pretty well to the kiss.

There definitely was hope for them, the vampire thought with content.

When they broke away, Alaric was once again all bloody around the mouth, and he wondered why exactly he always ended up bloodied in some fashion when he and the vampire shared a moment.

Oh right. Vampire. That explained it all.

“I guess that was my medication for the remaining wounds?”

Damon grinned. He really had a devious smile, and that definitely wasn't good for Ric's heart.

“Your guess is correct. Now, I suggest you clean yourself up, because you're bloody, you mischievous brat, and you go back to sleep for one or two hours, because you need it. I'll compel the doctors and talk to the sheriff department.”

Alaric raised an eyebrow at the “mischievous brat” comment, but agreed to Damon's plan, and the vampire watched him fall back into sleep.

But as he hadn't any history teacher left to mess with, the vampire soon went back to thinking about asking Ric to turn, and it wasn't a thought he enjoyed, fearing the outcome of such a suggestion. He left quickly, and on the way back to his car, he saw Theodoric Saltzman watching him.

The young man spoke softly as the vampire passed by, but it was still meant for him to hear, even if Theo didn't know about his enhanced hearing.

“A Satlzman is never accidentally ran over by a car. Our reflexes are too good to allow that to happen. And it can only mean one thing: someone did it intentionally... Landyn won't like that.”

 


	28. It was necessary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set during 3x13  
> I changed some things about Evilaric's murders, seeing as the guy is, raving mad, of course, but also a seasoned killer with instincts about those things. Saltzman. Falkenbach. You know.

A lot of things had happened since the last time he had died, and surprisingly enough, considering the murders and everything, what was really, really unnerving Alaric, was the fact that Theodoric seemed to be trailing him, lately.

Damon had told him, as soon as he had been out of the hospital, that Theo was interested by his “accident”. So interested, that he'd have seemed worried, if he hadn't been completely emotionless in all that concerned empathy. Ric knew better, of course. And what he knew told him he'd have to get his cousin out of Mystic Falls before anything too odd happened. Not easy, considering there were witches, werewolves, vampires, hybrids and resurrection involved in the daily town story.

And well, Theo had taken it upon himself to discover who had started killing people. The serial killer / hitman in him didn't like other people to take on his current territory, and he certainly didn't like that the idiot out there who had sliced a guy's throat and left the body with a stake on his chest in the wood behind the major's house had driven the feds back to Mystic Falls. The two FBI agents that had come after the Sobriety Merchant's stop in the city had finally left, empty-handed of course. Theodoric's aliases never left any hint behind.

Alaric turned on his left side, trying to sleep, but no matter what he tried to do, he couldn't seem to find peace. Either he thought about the danger Damon and Stefan were facing, dining with Klaus and Elijah, as he was there, safe and secure at the Gilbert house, or his mind went to the two murders that had happened during the last days.

At first he had suspected Theo. Who wouldn't have?

But the thing was, when Bill Forbes had been attacked at the hospital, Alaric had been intently glaring at a flirty cousin of his misleading his older students at the Grill. So the teacher knew for a fact, that, unusually, Theo wasn't the culprit.

Ric sighed, and turned again, ending with his nose in the pillow, which made breathing quite difficult. He turned one more time, now facing the ceiling, and smiled thinking about how Damon sometimes did sleep with his nose in the pillow. The teacher had observed his boyfriend often enough: the vampire habitually breathed like anyone, out of habit, unlike some vampires who freaked everyone out by forcing themselves not to breath, because. Those were freaky, anyway, and never pretended to be ordinary people. On their summer trip, Damon had explained to him the various kinds of vampires there were, and while the teacher had not been surprised to hear most of them were pretending to be normal people, like Stefan, or partied every night and moved a lot, devil-may-care, like Damon, hearing about those who did everything to be even more bizarre than being a vampire already made them had left him perplexed. Though he had to admit Damon was becoming more and more like his brother as he stayed with people who actually cared about him. Anyway, the point was, his boyfriend usually breathed out of habit, except during the night, when he buried himself in his pillow. Once the fun part of sleeping-in-the-same-bed was done with, of course.

Alaric still wasn't sure where he and Damon stood.

They were making their way back to their previous relationship, he could say that much. But he didn't know how well on the way they were exactly.

Oh well. It's not like they could simply be back to normality so quickly. And Damon was lucky. Most of the time, lovers one killed tended not to be this forgiving. Not that they actually had a choice about that, but still.

Alaric turned again. He really couldn't sleep. In fact, he wasn't even sure why he wanted to go to sleep so soon. It wasn't as if he was tired.

So he got up, and went downstairs with a good book to read about medieval England.

The first hour went smoothly.

But after a while, the teacher remembered why exactly he had thought it better to go to sleep so soon in the evening.

Right, the murders and the dangerous dinner were hovering above his head, mocking him as he tried to push them aside, and worrying him endlessly.

The fact that the stakes next to the two victims came from the Gilbert arsenal didn't make it any better. Alaric was positive Jeremy and Elena had murdered no one lately, well, no one except vampires and hybrids maybe, but those didn't count. Damon was having too much fun breaking people's neck, so it certainly wasn't him, even considering his dark past. Stefan was way too busy hating Klaus, and killing humans could hardly disturb the Original Bastard, so he was unlikely to be the culprit. Caroline wouldn't have killed her own father and a forensic without reason, though the fact that she had a reason to murder her father was debatable; he had tortured her, after all. Tyler wasn't a murder-type, just a sired-type. Bonnie was a witch, she didn't go around murdering people.

And that was about everyone who had knowledge of and access to the Gilbert arsenal.

And, of course, there was Theo, who had almost been stalking his cousin since the “car accident”, and had already trespassed in the Gilbert house. Alaric wouldn't have put it past him to do the same with the lake house. But he had no reason to create one more serial killer persona, he already had seven of those in activity, well established and convenient. And he had Ric as an alibi for the second murder. Reinforced concrete alibi, that.

Lastly, there was himself.

But Ric thought he'd ought to know if he spent time murdering people. And as he hadn't noticed anything like that, it surely meant he wasn't the one who had done it. Logic.

It riled him how there was no clues on the crime scenes. He had asked and somehow convinced Liz Forbes to hand him the files as soon as the first murder had happened, because he had a thing with those kind of things. Wonder why. The sheriff hadn't denied it. She had seen him fight, heard him talk during the attack on the Salvatore house. She knew how he was.

He hadn't asked for the pieces of evidence, though. He knew it would have been inappropriate.

But he was worried by the _modus operandi_ , obviously pointing to vampires and vampire hunting. He was worried by the victim's identity, it being that of a Council member and Meredith Fell's ex. Meredith whom he had befriended, and who had proven to be quite an interesting friend by exposing Damon as a vampire, saying she had nothing against it, exposing them as a couple, and making snarky comments about their love life. He didn't want anything to happen to her, if possible.

Even if Damon had deemed her a psycho.

The teacher had told his boyfriend it was the pot calling the kettle black.

Damon had raised an eyebrow and snorted, saying it took one to know one.

Ric hadn't been sure if that had been the vampire admitting he was as much of a psycho as he accused Meredith to be, or if it had been himself being accused to be a psycho since he could tell Damon was one. Eitherway, Ric didn't deny being mentally abnormal, as a Saltzman and all, so he hadn't took offense.

Strangely, Damon seemed to warm up to Meredith quickly enough given that he had suspected her of murder for a time. The teacher had wisely chosen to ignore what it said about his boyfriend, as he often did when the vampire talked of killing or other violent actions.

Anyway, the two murders had been slightly different, and that concerned Alaric.

Sure, both Brian Walters and Bill Forbes had had their throat sliced and a stake had been left nearby both times, but it wasn't the precision of a serial killer. It was significant, and the hunter didn't doubt the culprit to be the same person. But it wasn't a serial killer's work.

Not a traditional serial killer's work, if anything.

Hell if he knew what it meant, though.

Alaric just let himself sink into the sofa, his book closed on the low table. He closed his eyes for a second.

Just a second.

When he opened them again, the hunter had taken a decision.

The man stared at the ceiling above him for some time, wondering how much it would hurt. A lot, surely. But it couldn't be worst than being hurt by a car or having a lung punctured with a stake. And he was skilled at that. A Falkenbach didn't particularly enjoy killing, and they certainly didn't care about suffering. They knew how to make it quick, and as painless as possible.

They could also make it slow, and as painful as possible, if needed.

They didn't care, and so, the hunter didn't care.

But it wasn't the matter here.

Here, it was about slicing his own throat.

He was allowed to wish for it to be quick and painless. Even if it was only a wish.

He went to the front door, and played with a kitchen knife as he waited for one of the kids to come back. If Elena was the first one to arrive, he'd carry on with his plan. If Jeremy was there before her, he'd have to wait for another time.

It wasn't like he wanted the girl to find him dead upstairs, not that ot was the plan, but anyway, close enough. It wasn't like he wanted for her to have to finish him so that he'd come back. It wasn't as if he wanted to frighten her with what could have happened and what could still happen when she was associating with so many dangerous supernatural beings.

But it was necessary.

For her, because despite everything that had already happened to those she cared for, she still wouldn't see they were the responsible ones. Most of the people around her had known suffering and death because of vampires and werewolves and wayward witches, and still, she didn't want to understand how they were wretched lost cases. Monsters.

Alaric was like that, too.

That irked the hunter to no end.

And so, it was necessary for her. And for him, too.

Because Alaric really needed to understand, there was no hope for the monstruous beings he liked, and worst, loved. Because each time the teacher died, the hunter gained more power over their mind. Because Alaric and the hunter really needed to merge, and to finally let go of the pointless feelings he felt for the undead atrocities and other supernatural beings. Because if he let Alaric to his own devices, they'd be dead before long.

It was necessary.

Eventually, the hunter heard Elena's car. He went to the window to check it really was hers, just in case. He made sure he wouldn't be seen from outside, thought. It'd have been difficult to explain afterwards.

His ears had not wronged him. It was time to play.

The hunter slashed his left arm and made sure to leave a bloody handprint on the wall, then he rushed to first floor. There, he let himself fall against the landrail, and took the knife to his own jugular.

He had to be precise, for he didn't want to die too soon, thus dying for real. It'de be a pity if all his work had been for nothing, and even more if he died by his own hand.

The hunter winced as the blade cut open his flesh, as his blood ran down his neck, into his clothes. He didn't like the feeling. Agonizing wasn't his thing. That was one thing he had in common with the normal people, at least. The thought made him smile wistfully.

He'd have loved to be someone ordinary.

He hoped Elena wouldn't take long to come into the house.

It'd be bad if she took her time to play with a lost puppy, for example. Maybe he should have checked there were no lost puppy outside the house before doing this. But no, it was just his thoughts going astray because of the blood loss...

There it was. He heard the door opening, closing, someone's footsteps. There was a silence. Elena had surely seen the blood, by now, and it was still processing to her brain, he guessed. The silence didn't last. Rushed sprinting up the stairs.

The hunter's eyes saw a blurry form bending over him, and he heard Elena's voice.

The girl was terrified, and he couldn't find it in him to blame her for that, even when he knew it hindered her reaction as he talked, as best as he could when one side of his neck had been butchered, no, sliced, mind you, but still, it hurt, even when he knew any lost second could be his last amongst the living. Idly, he wondered one more time if cursed men got to pass on, or if they also went to the Other Side.

He told her.

He told her the obvious, that he would die no matter what, and if she wanted to be sure he'd come back, she'd have to finish him, in case the culprit wasn't supernatural.

The hunter wondered idly. Did he classify as a supernatural being, seeing as he was cursed?

 


	29. Indigestion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was one hell of an indigestion...  
> anyway, it's been quite a long time since I last made those two really banter, no?

Alaric left the hospital soon in the morning, hoping foolishly that his cousin wouldn't have heard of his last injuries.

Foolish hope, indeed, but one must hope if he wishes to escape despair. That was even more true when one's last name was Saltzman, and completely unavoidable when combined with the first name Alaric. He had enough on his plate as it was, and definitely didn't want to deal with Theo. Unfortunately, Theo didn't share this feeling.

The one-eyed Saltzman was waiting for Ric next to his car, that Damon had brought last evening before checking on Elena.

The teacher didn't bother hiding his wince as he came closer to his plague of a cousin.

“Alaric.”

“Theodoric.”

Neither of them failed to notice their greetings were equally tense. Ric wondered why. Theo wasn't one to be tense about those kind of things. Actually, the man was more prone to delight when he thought he could embarrass Alaric especially, because the latter usually felt it better to try and remind him of all his inhumanity, and Theo didn't like that at all.

“Something you wished to tell me, perhaps?”

Theo eyed him from head to toes, as if searching for something, and it took Ric a while to figure out he was actually searching for wounds. Good luck with that. The worst one was Elena's stabbing, which was hidden beneath his clothes, and the other, the knife wound on his neck, he had dissimulated with his collar. Besides, the wounds had closed upon his death, as always.

Well.

Not exactly as always.

Sure, the wounds had closed, but they hadn't disappeared. It seemed it was getting worse each time he came back to life.

The doctors had been positively astonished when he had been brought in, apparently unscathed though bloody as hell, and they had seen that his organs were a mess even though his skin was okay. Meredith had been of great help with that, taking the lead and dismissing the question, that is, how in all hells had he ended up in this state?

He wasn't going to explain to anyone else that he had been brought back to life by a magical ring. To doctors even less. They'd laugh to his face, even if they'd have no other explanation.

“You look alright...”

Ric snorted, trying to control the discussion.

“If I weren't, they wouldn't have left me out.”

“True enough. But when I asked the nurses how was my cousin yesterday night, they looked at me as if I had spoken of the Apocalypse. It seems you were a mess, but only inside. As if someone had butchered your intestines, but without actually breaking the skin. They were all rather puzzled, you know. Any explanation?”

“Indigestion.”

Theo grabbed Ric's collar, ready to say something, but stopped before the words left his mouth. Two buttons of the teacher's shirt went undone. He stared at what was before his eyes, trying to give it some sense.

Alaric looked at his exposed skin, and remembered that it had also been a thing the doctors had been shocked to see. Thinking about that, Meredith had asked him to pass by her apartment one of these days, so she could get a better idea of what exactly was happening to his shoulder... He was certain it had to do with a ring, a curse, and a seal, so, in short, with magic, but well, maybe she could get him some pain killers.

“What the hell is that?”

Half of his torso was now red with bulging veins, all of which were coming from his scar. Maybe it was becoming worse because of the number of times he had died, or it could be that the short period of time between his last deaths was worsening it somehow. Eitherway, his neck, torso, shoulder and left arm were now affected, and Alaric was really hoping it wouldn't go further and show on his face. His face, he couldn't hide.

Now, five of the points of the star-shaped seal were constantly swollen.

Three left to go.

Wherever it was leading.

“Not your business, Theo. Now let me go, or do you want us to see if, when my scar is acting strangely, I can be as twisted as you, whose seal is already faulty? No? I guessed as much.”

Ric drove right back to the Gilbert house.

Elena had insisted to clean up the house, and he could understand that she didn't want to stay any longer than necessary in a blood-soaked place. But it was his blood, and his mess to deal with. He already had a hard time believing he had asked her to finish him last night. Actually, he didn't remember it, but he guessed he had been in too much of a haze for it to be surprising. Still, he didn't want the girl to live too many traumatic experiences. She had already enough of those as it was.

So the teacher had planned to clean up everything that she might have forgotten the preceding night as soon as he'd get out of the hospital. Damon had told him over the phone he had had to force the young woman to quit it and go to sleep over to Caroline's when he had come to visit. The vampire had supposedly stayed at the Gilberts' all night.

Well, they could share croissants and gossip about their favorite murderers while cleaning the remaining blood stains, it'd be lovely.

As Ric parked near the house, he noticed that Damon was already out and waiting for him.

He got out of the car and walked slowly to the vampire. He had this disturbing feeling that his internal organs were some sort of slop boiling beneath his skin, and the upper left half of his body was itching to the point he had half a mind to rip out his skin with his nails. He wasn't going to do anything quickly today.

“You don't look alright...”

Alaric let out a laugh and decided the hell with proprieties. He hugged his boyfriend, and for a second he felt as if his pain was subduing. For a second.

Damon arched an eyebrow.

“To what do I owe this display of fondness?”

“Theo told me the exact contrary not half an hour ago. But that was before he got to see the state of my shoulder, of course. Then, his face told me he was thinking exactly along your lines.”

They went in the house, and as soon as the door was closed, Damon started kissing Ric gently. Between his kisses, he somehow managed to ask:

“You showed your degenerate cousin your shoulder? Should I be worried?”

Ric broke away, a disgusted look on his face.

“What exactly are you implying, you depraved vampire? And don't think I haven't registered where your hands were going. You sending the kids away doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to me as soon as I get out of the hospital.”

The vampire gave him his best puppy eyes, but the teacher remained unaffected. Finally, Damon threw his hands up in abnegation, muttering about how, anyway, he would have been the one to have things done to him. Matter of perspective, Alaric would have wanted to argue. The vampire sat on the floor and gestured for his boyfriend to do as much.

The teacher gave the blood-stained floor a critical look, but complied.

“You didn't clean anything after Elena went away, did you?”

Damon grined a damoniac smile and started to undress the teacher eagerly. So much for abnegation.

“I thought it romantic to have our breakfast sitting upon your life force, so to say.”

Ric rolled his eyes and surmised it wouldn't stop the vampire even if he were to point out that given Damon's actions, they were not likely to eat breakfast anytime soon.

“Guessed as much. It's frightening how I'm starting to find your creepiness predictable.”

“That's love for you. Now, about your cousin...”

“Shut up.”

“No, but you have to admit, he's good-looking, and we have the same hair color, and almost the same eye color, and...”

“Damon, do you want me to break your neck right now?”

“I don't.”

“Then shut up.”

And to give more conviction to his point, Alaric leant over his way-too-chatty-boyfriend and sealed his mouth with his own. He was aching like hell, and really needed something, or, in this case, someone, to get his mind off the pain. Maybe it wasn't the wisest way, for he was certainly going to strain himself to death, but he needed it, and who had ever said him to be reasonable?

Anyway, it did wonder, seeing as Damon finally shut up.

Later, as they were lying on the floor, the vampire traced patterns with his fingers on his boyfriend's back, trying to get him to relax. He was worried about the scar too, but there was nothing they could do for now. Still, he was starting to wonder...

“Does it hurt much?”

“Like hell.”

Alaric sat up and looked at the mess they had done. He felt a bit ashamed, and promised himself he'd never lose control like that. Somehow, he had a feeling this particular promise would be forgotten one day or another, and he didn't like that at all.

“I can't believe we did it right in the entrance, and on the floor at that...”

He gave Damon a stern look, fully aware that his vampiric lover and this lazy smile of his were the true culprits behind his momentary lapse in judgement.

Damon, still lying naked and exposing his sculpted body for the sheer sake of arousal, smirked.

“See the good side of the coin: we already had to clean, we just took a little pleasure before that.”

“And what if Elena had come back and found us having sex? Or what if she comes home before we get all... this cleaned up?”

Ric didn't like the look the vampire was giving him as he asked these two questions. It usually meant Damon had done something. And half the time, it wasn't something good, even if his boyfriend maintained it was. The teacher couldn't think of anything bad the other could have done about this in particular, but with Damon, he didn't stop to the thinkable.

“I bribed Vampire Barbie to keep Elena out of the house, and, consequently, out of our hair.”

Alaric squinted, searching in the vampire's face a hint that he was joking.

He found none.

“You... bribed Caroline with what exactly?”

“You know, this picture of us kissing in bed.”

The teacher stood up sharply and went to the kitchen, not without checking that all curtains had been drawn, of course. He didn't exactly want the neighbours to see him strolling around the house naked. And he certainly didn't want them to see him naked and taking the bread knife to stab an equally naked Damon Salvatore in the guts until the unsufferable vampire begged for mercy.

Though, wicked as he was, his lover could very well end up enjoying it.

He had finally found the damned knife when Damon joined him in the kitchen and snatched a wooden tray to use as a shield.

“I knew I shouldn't have left you take that picture. I knew it. I just knew it.”

“Erm, Ric, calm down and we'll get this breakfast, okay? Then we'll clean the entrance and the stairs, and after that we'll talk a bit, right? It'd be good if we had an idea of your killer's identity, don't you think?”

The vampire had known it was likely to turn out this way, but still, what was the big deal with the picture? It wasn't as if they had been doing things other than kissing, and they weren't even naked... Though the location of his hand had been easily guessable... And Alaric had had his shirt off... and both of them had had some pretty lascivious faces on at the moment... Oh well, he could see why Ric was angry, he knew the guy after all, and their definitions of proprierty weren't exactly similar.

He had been so right to hide the camera in timer mode... Maybe he could try filming next time.

And all that, not even Ric's sexiness, didn't change the fact that the teacher had been killed the night before, and by someone who had fled without being seen. If there was someone out there able to outdo the Falkenbach and willing to have his hide...

Damon shuddered. Maybe it was time to ask Alaric.

 


	30. It would have been dishonest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right... I feel I'm going to be have to run away fast, or else I'll be lynched.
> 
> Bye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, everyone, but I had to attend to my computer's funerals.  
> No, seriously.  
> Well, actually, it still works, but the thing is, the screen doesn't. Two third of it are either black, white, full of color lines, or displaying lines of dead pixels. Not sure what happened. I moved the screen to see better, there was creak, and it went crack!

“I've been thinking...”

Ric arched an eyebrow as he heard Damon talk.

“Interesting. You don't do that often. What has warranted such an uncharacteristic behavior, if I may ask?”

The serious look the vampire gave him with no trace of mock hurt in it rang a bell, and Alaric thought it might not be the time to joke anymore.

“Damon. I'm listening. Really.”

The teacher saw his lover take a deep breath, and then he knew for sure he'd hear either something very grave, or something completely ridiculous coming out of this mouth. A mouth that had a history of riling people up really quickly, and most of the time doing this at the worst moments possible. A mouth that, sometimes, not often, on occasion, a mouth that uttered unsure words and so had made a habit of making the teacher's heart race up.

So impredictable.

“Ric...”

Damon's eyes were wavering, going from Alaric's face and eyes to anywhere else in the room, as if the vampire wasn't certain that he'd have the heart to talk and look him in the eyes, as if, still, he knew he had to do exactly that.

What he wanted to do, and what he wanted to gain, were contradictory. Damon wanted to ask, and he knew that to get the answer he wanted, he couldn't do it any other way than by looking Ric in the eyes. But he was afraid.

Damon was afraid of what would be said.

Damon feared the answer Alaric would give him.

And when Alaric understood that, he got a pretty good idea of what was going on.

He didn't want to disappoint his boyfriend. But Damon was right to fear. Ric simply couldn't say yes. Answering yes was to bet on the future. And people like the hunter didn't bet on the future. They lived, they killed, they died. It was bad enough that they passed their curse on from one generation to another. It was bad enough that, despite knowing they were human monsters, they still couldn't help but wish for a normal life, a family, and children.

The teacher couldn't say yes.

“Ric, you are strong, because of your blood... But you're not strong enough.”

Damon finally fixed his gaze on Alaric's.

He had to say it. He had to ask.

Because he didn't want to lose the teacher. Not anymore. Not ever again.

“You have more instinct than any of us, and that's saying a lot, considering the nature of vampires. But we are hunters, when you're a killer. You and your family, you are dangerous, and maybe the most dangerous humans that live. You've got instinct. You've got strenght. You've got speed. You don't have the remorse.”

And that, it still meant he wasn't evil. He could be good if he wanted to, and he didn't have to fight against an intrinsic need to murder and destroy. He could fight it. He didn't want to.

If Alaric turned, he'd have to experience the vampiric urges. To fight against a need that would be added to his own lack of hesitation. It'd be dangerous. It'd be terrible.

But Damon could help him. He was a damn good teacher at self-control, when he wanted to. Maybe he didn't know much about what the mix between a Saltzman and a vampire would do. But Alaric wouldn't be the first one. There was Hans. With Hans' and Damon's help, Ric would make it.

And then, the vampire wouldn't have to fear this much for the future.

Alaric would be stronger than before, more dangerous, harder to kill. Damon hadn't seen much of Hans' strenght. But he could say the dread he had felt wasn't only due to the Falkenbach vampire's age.

Alaric would also be there longer. There wouldn't be an expiry date.

“But you're still too weak... Too... easy to break. You're better than any of the vampires and werewolves we've met at fighting, and still, some did kill you, because you're human. Your strength, as great as it is, is not enough to go long against a vampire. A werewolf, maybe, but not a vampire, or worst, a hybrid or an Original. Your speed is better than any human being's, but it is nothing compared to mine, and barely enough to keep up with a werewolf in human form.”

As he listened, the teacher kept all emotions at bay. He didn't want to crush Damon's hope, and still, he knew he'd have to. But the least he could do was to let the vampire finish.

“Alaric, please.”

But Damon couldn't see anything in Ric's eyes. And that in itself was most likely announcing an answer he wouldn't like. Unless the teacher was a horrible man and toying with him.

“I can't lose you another time. You have the ring, but what if it is stolen, lost, or if it stop working? You know it takes you more and more time to come back every time. I don't want to lose you.”

Of course, Damon could just tie Ric up, and go far away from the insane people who wanted all of them dead. But it meant he'd have to leave all the others behind, and that, he didn't want to do. And even if he had wanted to, Alaric would have strangled him over and over as soon as he'd be free. And then, the teacher would go back to Mystic Falls and help the kids.

A lot of troubles, and no result.

So it let only one solution.

The vampire gulped, and tried to talk.

Tried.

It didn't work.

Nothing passed his lips. No words. No sentences. No question.

A knot in his throat, preventing him from asking. Something that told him he'd be heartbroken once he'd have asked. Something that told him there was no way the man next to him would accept to become a vampire. Something that told him he shouldn't even have dreamt of asking.

Alaric saw all that in his lover's eyes.

And because of what he saw, for a second he thought he ought to say yes and accept. He didn't want to hurt Damon more than he had already been. He didn't want this shadow to hang over their love.

But he couldn't.

He couldn't say yes to please Damon, because if he did, in the end, he'd blame the vampire for what he'd become. And their love wouldn't survive long to such a trial.

He would say no.

“Damon.”

Alaric had thought about it when he had learned what had really happened to Isobel. He had believed he could have become a vampire out of love. And surely he'd have done it, if she had asked.

And after that, he had considered a positive answer for the time Damon would ask, if Damon ever was to ask. He had certainly been reluctant, but he had considered it, and he had come to the decision that yes, he could accept, if he was certain of their love.

But at the time, Alaric hadn't known.

At the time, Alaric hadn't met Hans. He hadn't seen what would become of him, if Isobel or Damon had disappeared, killed or simply gone. He hadn't witnessed the inhumane state of a vampiric Falkenbach with no anchor to humanity.

“You have to ask if you want an answer.”

A pang of guilt.

It was a cruel thing to do.

He shouldn't have said that.

He had had to.

If he hadn't, if he had let Damon go without ever finishing his question, the vampire would have hold on a onto a foolish hope. A desperate and a deceitful hope. A false light blinding him more than any darkness could.

They wouldn't live on a lie.

“Alaric, will you let me turn you into a vampire?”

The question mark was there only for decorum, Damon realized as he asked. He knew the answer already. And he didn't like it.

Ric gave him a small smile, a sad smile, and Damon felt a sour pain in the back of his mind.

He had known all along.

Alaric had known all along what the question would be. The vampire could see it in his eyes. Ric wasn't stupid, and he knew him well. He had known.

And that wasn't all.

Damon had known all along what the answer would be. But he had held on a foolish hope. And that hope had just died.

“I'm sorry Damon, but I can't.”

Why was the vampire feeling this numb?

“Why?”

“You know it, Damon. I can't. I'm already a monster. I'm already a killer.”

And he didn't want to become worst. He didn't want the urges. He didn't want the needs.

He wanted to stick to the scarce humanity he had.

He didn't want the fear of snapping and giving up what made life worth it.

If he wasn't a monster in body, he was one in mind. Becoming one in body wouldn't make him less a monster in mind.

Damon turned on his heels and started pacing angrily around the room.

“And so what if you're a killer?! I am one too, but I can still be a good person. Hell, if you turn, you might even be better than Barbie at controlling your urges, seeing as you're completely immune to what death and blood arise in the human nature.”

“Damon...”

“Let me finish! You can ask Hans for advice! You can turn and choose to stay as you are in your mind! You can decide to stay with me.”

“I can't, and you know it.”

Damon didn't listen. He didn't want to. Hell, he wanted to forget Ric had answered, to forget he had asked, to forget the feelings he had for the man. But he couldn't, so he kept going on, and accused the teacher of everything. Of not loving him. Of wishing him to suffer. Of not caring enough.

He went on and on.

He ranted, and Alaric listened.

In the end, he stopped talking, and cried silently.

One or two tears, now and then, rolling down his reddened cheeks.

It had been years since Damon had last been so shaken.

Ric sighed, and thought they looked utterly ridiculous, stark naked and still so serious. He was glad the curtains were drawn. But he dismissed it. It wasn't the point. It wasn't the time.

So he went to Damon, and lead him to a chair. He held the vampire in his arms, and said nothing. He couldn't give him what he needed. He couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear. He wouldn't offer someone he held so dear an acceptance that wasn't complete and would drive them apart in the end. He wouldn't give Damon something he didn't have to begin with. It would have been dishonest.

After a while, Damon stopped crying. It wasn't his kind of thing. He wasn't a crying-kind-of-guy. He wasn't even sure why he was crying. Was it because he felt this refusal as being turned down? Was it because he feared for Ric's survival in the near future? Was it because Alaric had refused to stay with him for all eternity?

The vampire wasn't sure.

But he felt the sadness and the hurt invade his heart, up into his throat, and directly to his head. He knew it was here, just behind his eyes, it could be seen if someone took the time to look and search. He wondered if Ric could see, behind the glassy windows of his blue eyes, the sorrow he was experiencing.

He looked at the teacher, who was looking at him, eyes half-closed, but still aware of everything, still searching for the reflection of his thoughts in his eyes. It was incredible, how Alaric could read through anyone when he took the time to do so.

“You can go on dying for all I care...”

“I do that already, Damon. I do that already. I die, and still, I'm here. Remember that. I'm here.”

 


	31. Flicker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not what I intended to write in this chapter, then again, what I had intended to write omehow ended up being more or less included a couple of chapters back, so...  
> From sexy to creepy.
> 
> And I've got my new laptop. All hail the return of the computer!

Alaric could tell there was some tension between him and Damon after his refusal, but all in all, the vampire was taking it well enough. That is, well enough for Damon Salvatore.

Damon had started drinking his mind out, then he had insulted Ric all the way to sunday while being drunk, and finally, half-sobered up, he had decided there was no reason to mourn over a death that had yet to come, and had assaulted the teacher with all his perverted ideas until the man gave up fighting back and just went along with it. Now, they were back on a daily routine, and Ric simply ignored the vampire when he went back to grumpy-mood.

The teacher was already content enough that Damon hadn't opted to do what he usually did when things didn't go his way: sex wit strangers, a killing spree, alcohol, blood, and death. He wasn't going to complain about the mean comments that escaped his boyfriend's mouth from time to time. After all, he had only refused to spend eternity with him, no big deal, and he could totally see Damon's point with being angry at him. The vampire had his reasons.

And Alaric had his own too.

He knew it was for the best that he hadn't turned. There was no questionning it.

But he could understand that Damon was upset. Hell, he himself was upset, so surely Damon could be too.

Damon rolled on the bed to face him, and they both stared at each other.

They had done a quick clean up of the house once Damon had taken out the bourbon, or rather, Ric had cleaned up their mess while the vampire had ranted about how unfair life, death and living death were, and why the hell wasn't he able to find someone who would want him for all eternity? True, he had found ones who were either okay with eternity, or him, but never both. Still, he'd take Ric over Katherine anytime, because Ric wasn't cheating on him with his brother, no, no, take this image out of his mind, and out of the teacher's too by the same token because that was way too disturbing, and because thinking about Katherine always reminded Damon that she had had this creepy idea of putting the brothers with her and in the same bed and make them do things he never wanted to hear about again. Good thing she had never gotten to make it happen.

Anyway, it was now nighttime, a strong smell of bourbon was stenching the bed sheets, and they were both wonderfully naked. The anger the vampire had felt at his refusal had apparently turned him on, and there had been a lot of angry sex, followed with much make-up sex, and ending with a very lewd and laxy sex session. In short, they had made very good use of the day, and had been absolutely unproductive.

Ric was tired, but of course the vampire wasn't.

Stupid vampire stamina. Stupid vampire who looked like he could go another round right now right here. Stupid Damon who looked way too hot for his own sake.

“You look good in this. You should wear it more often.”

And stupid male anatomy that all but agreed with Damon's apparent readiness to engage into another battle, and that made him say stupid things.

Damon arched an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at his lips.

“I'm naked, you know that, don't you?”

Somehow, Alaric had the feeling his brain wasn't governing his body anymore, especially not his mouth, because this definitely wasn't something he had intended to say.

“Exactly my point. You should wear that more often. That, that is nothing.”

Yeah, his brain's connexion was definitely down. He would never admit he had said such a thing later on. Or he'd blame it on the bourbon. Or even on Damon's absorption of bourbon. It was hard to get a vampire drunk, but it was possible. He'd say Damon was drunk, and had imagined things. The thing being that Damon was actually still drunk, and might forget everything about what he had just said. Let's hope. Hope is what make the world go on. Hope is good.

And, did he say that his mouth wasn't responding to his brain? Yes? No matter, he'd say it again. His mouth wasn't acting according to his thoughts, its latest actions were yet another proof.

Alaric kissed his way back and forth his lover's stomach, and Damon shivered under the soft touch of his lips and tongue. Ric wasn't sure he was in control of his behavior, but soon found out he didn't care much at the moment, though his mind was clearly telling him he'd regret this lack of self-control later on. His mind told him that every single time.

The teacher moved himself over Damon's body, arms almost rooted in the mastress, and he brought his face to the vampire's, who shifted under him, disturbed by the languid glint in his boyfriend's eyes. All of a sudden, Ric seemed hungry, predatory, almost, and he hadn't been that way during the preceding intercourses.

For an unknown reason, it worried Damon.

And wasn't he the one supposed to be a big ball of frustration?

“Didn't you say you were tired?”

The glint became fiercer, and the hunter lowered himself to get closer to the vampire. Damon felt the hot breath of the man on his face, and he couldn't help feeling there was something wrong with the whole situation.

“Why are you asking, Damon? Do you mind another round?”

“Of course not. I simply wondered.”

The vampire tried to ignore the unpleasant feeling he had. But no matter what, it lingered. It almost seemed like it wasn't Alaric who was talking to him, but an evil twin brother. Which was an unpleasant feeling, because while Damon wouldn't mind having two Rics in his bed to satisfy some fantasies of his, he right now felt like he had only one, and not the right one at that. Which was disturbing, because the hunter had stopped talking altogether and turned his attention to lower parts of Damon's body, and while the vampire found it extremely pleasuring in itself, and damn, where and when did Alaric learn to do such things with his tongue?, he couldn't shake the feeling this was not Alaric, or at least, not his Alaric. Which made no sense. Unless Ric had an evil twin.

Did he?

Damon groaned as the hunter's fingers traveled to his ass, instantly forgetting his mental struggle to deal with a more physical one.

Yet, in the back of his mind, deafened, muzzled, but still here no matter what, a voice was telling him there was something wrong with Alaric. Far, far away in the darkest part of his mind.

Damon's back arched when a finger entered him. The hunter's mouth was hot on his cock, the hunter's finger was cold in his ass, and Damon couldn't have cared less about the strange feeling. This was definitely Alaric, Alaric who knew him and his body better than anyone else, maybe better than he did himself. The man knew where to touch, when to twist, what to whisper in his hear to get him so hard and red the vampire felt like he would simply burst open to welcome the man he loved and all of his body.

A smug thought crossed his mind, that he was the only one who could do the same to the hunter's countenance, though not with the same actions, of course.

A second finger joined the first one, and together they touched a spot Ric had come to favor over the past weeks, and that always made Damon scream a bit, no matter how prepared he was. The vampire, whose body was so cold usually, melted on the spot, and he let out a strangled cry.

And with that, he came in the hunter's mouth.

Damon flushed, as he always did when it ended like that. The hunter looked up from between the vampire's thighs, with this trademark gaze of his, a sharp, all-knowing look from beneath his lashes, and he moved away from the vampire's dick.

The vampire heard the hunter swallow. It made his heart miss a beat. Why couldn't he have this man forever and ever? What had he done that was so terrible he wasn't allowed to keep what made him a better person? Why wasn't he allowed access to redemption?

“You're really, really intoxicating, Damon.”

There was something in this voice, something strange and cold, nearly reproachful, as if the vampire wasn't supposed to be this way, as if the hunter wasn't supposed to feel this way. And maybe that was it, maybe Alaric felt it wasn't right, because he had wanted, he had wished to say yes to his request, but his conscience had forbidden it.

“No regrets that you won't have this sight only to yourself for all times, then?”

Damon immediately felt bad. That was cruel. As cruel as Alaric telling him he wouldn't, because he couldn't, and for no other reason. Who cared about rules anyway?

But try as he might, but justify as he tried, Damon still felt bad, and he realized how difficult it must have been for the teacher to tell him he wouldn't turn. He had seen the hurt, the regrets, the temptation in Ric's eyes back then, but he hadn't realized.

None of them liked the teacher's answer, but liking it or not didn't matter there.

The vampire shut his eyes, unwilling to see the look on his lover's face.

The hunter's fingers moved out of Damon, and the vampire almost whimpered to have them back in, to feel the contact between the both of them. He opened his eyes and looked at the man, ready to give him the best puppy eyes he could do. He'd be sad and upset only once he'd have gotten his treat, and he certainly wasn't going to let the hunter get away after this much teasing.

But the moaning strangled itself in his throat, as he caught sight of the slightly parted lips, of the few drops of white cum, his, trickling down the hunter's chin, of the transfixing blue eyes behind the lashes.

“You know I can't, Damon. But we can either make good use of the time we have left together, or spend it pouting on our own because we didn't get all that we wanted.”

And as the hunter said those words, the vampire saw something flicker in the blue eyes, something that shouldn't have been here. He didn't know what it was, but it felt wrong.

He convinced himself it was because of the refusal, that it was his insecurity questioning needlessly the sincerity in Alaric's words, and so he forced the flicker out of his mind.

Damon sprang up from the bed without a warning. He grabbed the hunter's back, and crashed his lips against his own. The man tensed in surprise, but soon let himself into the flow of passion.

Damon had to push aside this doubt he was experiencing.

But if he had known, he'd have not thought the same thing, the hunter mused. Because there were reasons to worry, at least according to what the vampire would have thought if he had known.

The hunter let himself drown into this man, no, this vampire, this monster, for one last time. He allowed himself to ignore the pure hatred he felt, both towards the monster he was fucking with such little restraint, and towards himself for allowing this to happen. He appreciated to their fullest each of the vampire's moans of pleasure and lust, feeling almost sorry that he'd have to let go of this love, for it in truth was foul and rotten, no matter how pristine it looked. He did Damon so well they were both breathing heavily when they landed back on the mastress.

Damn Alaric for loving a monster.

Couldn't he have found someone the hunter could have tolerated? A woman, a man, he didn't care. But this? This was the worst kind of depravation, and Alaric's faults were unforgivable. And he was Alaric, and Alaric was him. And he was unforgivable.

The hunter looked at the vampire lying beside him. He looked at him a long time, and he couldn't understand.

Monster.

Killer.

Impurity.

And still, he loved the monster, the killer, the impurity.

He sighed. Alaric had messed it up pretty well.

This wouldn't make his task any easier. But still, he'd do what he had to do. Killing Damon wouldn't be easy, but he would do it, when the time'd be there. No vampire could be allowed to stay alive, no werewolf, no witch, none of those non-humans, and none of those who had created them, and had the power to create other monsters. He couldn't allow it.

The hunter nestled against the monster, and he felt strangely safe and well there. The vampire looked a bit put out, but he said nothing, and just tilted his head so that their forehead touched.

Why couldn't he just stay here, and sleep?

Because he couldn't. The hunter put his hands around Damon's throat, and caressed the pale skin with his fingertips. He felt the vampire shudder at his touch.

“Ric, what are you doing exactly?”

The hunter said nothing, and withdrew his hands.

Not yet.

 


	32. "Innocent"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x16

The hunter growled in his sleep. He had been so close to succeed, and he wouldn't even have needed to reveal himself to the others. Esther's plan had been good. To link all of the Originals' lives and end them with a single move. Alaric had agreed, and he had been just this close to do it, but obviously, the Original Bastard had had to be kind-of-immune to the white-oak-stake-thing and be able to move and stop him...

An additional dozen of seconds and Alaric would have ended it. The hunter wouldn't have even needed to step out of the shadows of the teacher's mind. Well, not exactly, since there would still have been the normal vampires and other supernatural beings to deal with, but that was easy. A lot of work, certainly, but easy. Even the oldest, the strongest vampires could be killed easily enough. Sure, you had to be strong, quick, and cunning, but it was possible to deal with them, even if you were only a human, cursed or not. Originals weren't easy to deal with. Most weapons were useless against them, in the long run, and those that weren't useless were scarce and easily distroyed.

Take out the Originals, and maybe the vampires could be eradicated.

But no, it hadn't happened.

Klaus, being an hybrid and all, had been lucky and had saved his brothers, sister, and himself. Earning Alaric, and thus, the hunter, a concussion as an added bonus.

The hunter could feel something hard under his back, and he was sure he wasn't in a hospital. Which was weird, considering Meredith had just shot him, after she had treated him for the concussion. And since he didn't feel pain right now, he guessed she had used vampire blood to heal him. Which was weird too, considering she had just shot him.

The doctor obviously knew something was up with him and Alaric, or else she wouldn't have had reason to shot him. Alaric had been so surprised, the hunter had almost laughed his ass off. Almost, because it wasn't only Alaric Meredith had been threatening with the gun, but him too, because, let's not forget that in a strange sort of a twisted way, the hunter was Alaric. So the hunter had been threatened too, and he hadn't had enough time to take over when she had fired on him.

And god, that hurt. Like. Hell.

A pity, if Meredith had figured out he was the one doing the killings. He wondered how she had possibly understood. If he could find out before he killed her, he'd be able to avoid doing the same mistakes.

If he was lucky, the doctor was keeping him prisonner in a cellar or something, to interrogate him. If so, he could free himself while she was away and deal with her in his own way when she'd come back.

That is, if he was lucky. He hadn't been, lately.

If his assumptions were correct, she hadn't kept him and his shooting a secret, and had talked to Damon, or worst, to the sheriff, who'd have told Damon. There, it'd be a problem. Alaric had no idea he was responsible, and he'd have kept it that way if he had been given the choice. Easier to act unsuspicious when you actually don't know anything you shouldn't. And if they knew, they'd keep an eye on him, or worst, they'd try to erase him. He couldn't let that happen.

He was the best that could happen to Alaric. Just a little more time, and he'd have been Alaric. Just a little more time, and Alaric and he would have been alright once again.

But no, Meredith Fell had had to be nosey and figure out he had something to do with the murders. How? After all, he had gone as far as to get himself killed to appear as a victim and not as a suspect. Well, it was also to speed up the merging process a bit. But still, not every serial killer would be so devoted to their alibi, even with a resurrection ring.

Best not to show up for the next days, the hunter guessed, and he let himself be driven back to the back of Alaric's mind, as the teacher woke up.

Ric opened his eyes, and the first thing he noticed was that he definitely wasn't in his room, or, for the matter, in a bed. He blinked a bit, trying to adjust to the luminosity of the place he was in, and that let more light in than what should be allowed where someone slept.

His sight focused slowly, and he recognized a cell.

Why was he in a cell?

Alaric got up from the bench he had been lying on, and was happy to notice he had no wounds, despite Meredith shooting him the evening before.

For a second, he believed she was the one who had killed all these people, as Damon had believed once, and that she had come back for him since he had escaped the clutch of death the first time. Not that he had really survived, but she didn't know that. No matter, maybe she had shot him, healed him with vampire blood, and taken him away in a secluded place with underground cells to question him and make sure he hadn't told anyone about her culpability. After all, she couldn't be certain he really had no memories of his attacker.

And yes, there were many place with underground cells around Mystic Falls, some even deep in the woods so that no one would hear the screams. Mystic Falls was such a lovely place.

This belief was however brushed aside when someone came in, and a face appeared on the other side of the bars. It wasn't Meredith.

It was Elizabeth Forbes.

What the hell did that mean?

He asked just that.

At some point Damon joined them at the holding cells. This was so going to blow up out of proportions and control, the teacher just knew it...

Alaric felt like his head was spinning. Him, the murderer? That was ridiculous. He had died from that nutcase, hadn't he? Maybe Meredith was framing him? But why? And seriously, no one had suspected her, and that was for a good reason. She herself had no reason to do it. Unless she was a psycho, of course, as Damon had first surmised. Oh, right, one person had suspected her. Damon. But Damon wasn't a very good judge of character, and he himself had some issues with killing sprees and trust, so...

Did Meredith really think he was the culprit? It would explain why she had shot him... But how could she think that?

After a good five minutes of running in circles between Liz who simply couldn't do anything to help because she had no proof of his innocence, and Damon who was hell bent on getting his boyfriend out of jail and find evidences when it wasn't his job and that would only make a mess if he did, Alaric was fed up with all that, and a bit angry.

He checked there was no sheriff deputy at the holding cells, and just let the Falkenbach in him come out. When he talked, his voice was cold and dangerous.

“Sorry, sheriff, but I am no serial killer. Only your average natural born killer.”

Elizabeth Forbes blinked.

“What?”

Next to her, Damon stopped arguing on his own and frowned, then winced, looked up, and rolled his eyes. It was quite a sight, and Ric could have laughed if he hadn't put his serious-face on.

“Right, Liz, we forgot about that... You might have noticed that Ric over here is awfully good at fighting and killing vampires/whatever-kind-of-monsters-comes-at-him-with-unfriendly-intentions. Have you?”

The sheriff arched an eyebrow, waiting for more.

Damon put a patronizing hand on her shoulder, and the arched eyebrow rose up even more.

Alaric rolled his eyes, finding the vampire's theatrics very out of place right now.

“Well, Ric over here is human, as you already know, but he and his whole family are cursed so they don't know hesitation. They're awfully good killers, but without the killing intent or impulse, so they usually don't go aound murdering people for fun. When they do, it's most of the time out of necessity. Of course, there are a few who, since they don't care about killing, just do it, but...”

Ric coughed, feeling that the vampire wasn't helping.

“Right, anyway, that's why Alaric over here is a super-badass-and-effective hunter. But he doesn't kill for the fun of it, because there is no fun, or nothing else for the matter, in the killing for him.”

“What he means, sheriff, is that 'Alaric over here' is certainly not the one who did it. Let's face it, if I were the culprit, you wouldn't have found anything to incriminate me, even by association. I have the skills to murder someone without getting caught, even more so if I get some time to prepare it. If it were me, I certainly wouldn't have left a message behind, and the message wouldn't have come from the Gilbert stash. I'd have come up with some kind of undestructible-even-if-doubtful alibi, and not spent the nights of the murders alone. As for the motives, I have no reason to do that, but you don't have to believe me there. Still, this is not the work of a sane Falkenbach, what I am, by the way, and so it can't possibly mine. If I had to guess a culprit, I'd say my cousin Theodoric, but unfortunately he has alibis worth thrice your salary for every single murder...”

Liz looked a bit shocked, and it wasn't surprising, she had just learned the local high school history teacher was a cursed man with instinct for murder. Of course, she had always known there was something about him, but that? She had surmised Alaric Saltzman was a very good fighter with a knack for the supernatural, not a natural born killer...

“And what do you suggest I do? I can't let you out on your good word.”

Damon was about to talk, but Ric stopped him.

“How long have I been there?”

“A few hours, why?”

“You wrote a report about it?”

The sheriff winced almost apologetically.

“Sorry about that. But as soon as we get proof you're not guilty of anything, we'll let you out. It shouldn't hinder you with your work or anything else. It's not as if you were convicted.”

Alaric hold up a hand, and shrugged it off.

“Don't worry about that. I can even say you'll get a visit of my lawyer before noon, and she'll get me out of there faster than you can say 'innocent'”.

Damon and the sheriff frowned at the same time.

“Your lawyer?”

They looked at each other, shocked because they had spoken exactly at the same time, and said the same thing. Alari smirked at that, but his mood soon lowered again.

“But you haven't even made a call yet...”

“I don't have too. I'm literally stalked by my family, and they surely didn't like the news of my jailing. You should prepare yourself to meet one of them before long...”

Damon squinted disbelievingly at his boyfriend, and pointed out what had just struck him.

“Your lawyer is one of your cousins?”

“Why do you believe they are so hard to shake off? All of the Saltzman Family's lawyers are from the family itself. When one of us is accused with something, they step up immediately and get the most they can from the opposition. Even when the verdict is 'guilty', we Saltzmans always get off lightly. Mine is my cousin Magdalena Haguenhauer. She looks younger than she is, and friendly, but you should be careful when dealing with her. She'd rip you to shreads if you give her a reason to. Damon, you of all people shouldn't cross her.”

The vampire put his hand on his heart, mocking hurt.

“You wound me. Do you think I'm unable not to rile up people?”

“I do.”

The vampire grinned a devilish smile, stole a kiss through the bars, and left in a hurry.

“And don't get into trouble... Oh well, I guess he will no matter what.”

Alaric turned to Elizabeth Forbes.

“Since you're bound to check my background history, I'm willing to play blunt honesty. I've killed a man once, who wasn't a supernatural being. That's why my mother reacted badly to your call. I've been acquitted, for it was self-defense and to protect someone else, and I was a minor at the time. Feel free to look it up, though you won't find my name on the accessible reports and newspapers: homicide on an armed attacker, in 1991, Boston.”

Elizabeth Forbes left the sheriff office a bit disturbed. She went straight to the Mystic Grill, where Damon had said he'd be, and there, she watched longingly the glass of bourbon the vampire was emptying. She really would have liked one too, but she was on duty.

They were both about to leave, her to seek evidences, or lack of said evidences, him to do whatever he had planned to do to interfere in her investigation. But a woman sat next to them.

“Sheriff Forbes? I am Magdalena Haguenhauer, Alaric Saltzman's lawyer.”


	33. Undoing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wanted it? Here it is!  
> (No, I'm not telling what is "it". You'll have to read.)
> 
> And, by the way, I have now more chapters than in part one, "Adjusting to our reality"! Cheers!

****Magdalena Haguenhauer was a tall woman with flaming red hair and deep brown eyes. Her suit was dark grey, and her shirt matched her hair. Her smile seemed genuine and soft, but after what Ric had just told them, Damon wasn't fooled.

“Falkenbach” wasn't written on anyone's forehead, and so they always seemed like normal people, at first glance. The key part being, “at first glance”. One quickly changed their mind when the “normal people” held a blade to their throat and yet looked like they were drinking tea.

Speaking of Falkenbachs, Theodoric was nowhere to be seen, and yet the vampire was certain to have seen him enter the Mystic Grill not half an hour ago. Damon wasn't going to complain about that. He had way too many Saltzmans to deal with right now. One in jail, one defending him, and one on the loose. Wait, actually, it'd be better if he knew what the lunatic was planning...

Damon looked around, but he couldn't get a glimpse of the black hair, nor of the eye patch, of the most-irritating-natural-killer-out-there.

So he looked back at Magdalena, who had started speaking with Liz, and was positively giving him the chills. How did she do that, exactly? Her voice was even, maybe kind of sweet, and her features were welcoming. She wasn't batting an eyelid as she was arguing in a civilized tone with the sheriff. Full of contradictions, that she was.

Those Saltzmans really were awesome, when they weren't awful.

In the end, Liz seemed convinced. Not that Alaric was innocent, because it had been her feeling all along, then again, you can't trust a Falkenbach's honesty because they were bloody impossible to read, and she had learned it the hard way, even if she hadn't understood it at first. But she was convinced she could let him out without anyone arguing against her decision, if this Magdalena was the one doing the talking. No matter what point she raised, the woman could simply smile and find an answer in less than three seconds, as if she had been reading her thoughts.

And that was unnerving, but right now, it was mostly useful.

If they had a serial killer in town trying to put the blame on a cursed man, Liz Forbes was certain they could use two natural born killers to get rid of him, since they had an incentive to do so. Between two Saltzmans, at least one vampire, and the police, they were bound to find out who was the killer... and it was more than probable the culprit would be dealt with quickly enough. They were targetting members of the Council, after all, and the sheriff couldn't exactly write in a report what kind of link there was between the victims. If the killer was killed, they could always say they had no idea why he had done what he had done...

It wouldn't be the first time such an investigation were to be covered up in Mystic Falls.

Speaking of which...

Elizabeth Forbes turned to look at the man with dark hair, Damon Salvatore they had said, and Magdalena stopped a frown from disturbing her countenance.

The man was strange, in a way she couldn't quite describe.

When he had looked at her, the lawyer had felt something dangerous watching her, and her instincts had told her to be careful about this paticular person. Why, she wasn't sure. Yes, he was handsome, but that was hardly this kind of warning. Yes, he seemed muscular enough, for someone of his caliber, but he wasn't a bodybuilder either, and Magdalena was a Saltzman. She could deal with someone his size if she had to.

No, there was something predatory about him, and not in the same way that there was always something predatory about her family. It was something else. More... feral, maybe? That wasn't the word, but it was the best she could come up with for the moment. And she had more important things to are about.

When Landyn had heard about what was happening to Alaric, the head of the Saltzman Family had stayed silent for a whole minute, as if trying to process the piece of information. And Magdalena could understand that.

A Saltzman simply didn't get caught for something like that. Sure, it happened that they were caught and sent to jail over a murder they had perpetrated, after all, they weren't immune to bad luck or overhelming circumstances. But they were never accused of serial murders because 1) It wasn't their thing, unless they used it to cover up something else, 2) If they started murdering people like that, the family would be on their tail soon enough, 3) Serial murders were usually done in a way that let a lot of time to the killer to plan everything beforehand, and when a Saltzman had time to plan, he wasn't caught because of an easily recognizable weapon or something as dumb as that.

And Alaric was far from being an idiot. He woudn't make such mistakes, because he was a Saltzman, and even the dumbest of the family could tell those were beginners' mistakes, and because he was smarter than most.

Which meant someone was framing one of their own, and that, Landyn wouldn't tolerate it. Last time someone, back in Boston, had tried to frame a Saltzman to his fall in society, they had discovered one didn't fuck with the family, unless they wanted to lose their own place in society, their work, and all of their money. What, no horse head under the sheets? The Saltzmans were civilized, thank you very much.

Anyway, as soon as she had heard of Alaric's predicament, Landyn had called Magdalena to handle the case, and here she was, observing this strange place, where the sheriff seemed to know something was off at first glance, and where a good looking guy who surely hadn't worked a minute in his life seemed to be her counselor or something.

“Damon, now that I think about it, I'm sure it's not the first time Council members' are targetted. Unfortunately, the police records are long lost. But maybe you have something in your... archives?”

The tone sheriff Forbes had used implied something, and Magdalena wondered what exactly. And anyway, what was that Council? The Town Council?

The man frowned as if trying to remember something far away in time and memory.

“What year?”

“1912.”

Damon's eyes lit up. How come he hadn't thought of it before? He had been there in 1912, even more, he had come because a Council member, his own nephew, had been gruesomely murdered. And he hadn't been the only one.

“Oh. But... if that's the case, I'm not sure it can still go by 'serial murder'. It surely ain't the same killer, is it?”

Liz Forbes winced, knowing very well what he vampire was implying, but said nothing. Cursed woman or not, Magdalena Haguenhauer wasn't one of their own, and the sheriff couldn't even be sure that the woman did know about vampires and other supernatural occurencies.

“Serial killer or not, they are attacking my people. I have to act. And anyway, even if the culprit is only copycatting a centuries old killer, it still stand as serial murder.”

“I'll take a look.”

And with that, the vampire was off.

The sheriff and the lawyer made their way to the police station to free the history teacher. Waiting on the outside stairs, Liz could see Meredith Fell. She hoped there wouldn't be a scene between the lawyer and the accuser, because she didn't need that. But considering Meredith had taken care of the wound she had herself given to Alaric Saltzman, she guessed maybe the doctor wouldn't be so upset seeing him free again. Maybe. Possibly.

As far as she was concerned, and she was, because she was the sheriff of this godforsaken town, Elizabeth believed the doctor had surely overreacted when she had seen the history teacher with the knife in hand. Maybe he had asked forcefully why she had had a file on him and the murders, and Meredith had panicked and thought he was threatening her. Because Liz certainly didn't believe, no matter what either party said, that any of them were guilty of anything. Meredith simply wouldn't be able to slice someone's throat, and the cursed man certainly wouldn't have sliced his own throat, even if that gave him one hell of an alibi for one of the murders.

Magdalena stopped walking just before a young woman called out to the sheriff. She wanted to listen and observe, for now. There was something off about this place, this town and its inhabitants, and she wanted to know what it was all about. As a lawyer, she didn't like secrets, unless she was the one keeping them. Secrets could be the undoing of their keepers.

The young woman had a file with her.

“Sheriff Forbes, I was looking for you. I've received a revised version of the coroner's report, that state the time of death earlier in the evening. I'm sorry about Alaric, but it matched, and he frightened me when...”

Liz sighed at the news, happy to hear the release would be even easier.

“Don't worry about that. You handed the report, Mister Saltzman isn't hurt, and we can go back to searching for the real killer. You've done well, Meredith. I'd rather keep someone in jail for a night because you were to zealous in your assumptions, than have you killed too.”

Behind the two women, Magdalena rolled her eyes. So, this was all? This was way too simple...

Alaric was going to answer her questions, because she was certain he knew what was going on in this town that nobody was telling her. Maybe he didn't know who had been framing him, no one seemed to know who was the culprit, but he sure as hell knew why everyone was behaving so strangely. A Saltzman didn't just live in a suspicious area and ignore it.

“Miss Haguenhauer and myself are on our way to free Mister Saltzman. She's his lawyer and cousin. Do you wish to come with us?”

The woman winced a bit, and Magdalena had her idea of why. If she had understood correctly, this was the woman who had accused her cousin to begin with. She couldn't say Ric would be overjoyed to see her right now, even if she came in with the key to his freedom.

But then, Meredith looked at the red head behind the sheriff, and squinted, thoughtful.

Cousin...

“It's fun, actually, I just met another of Ric's cousins, or so he said. Theodoric Saltzman, I believe. He was searching for the holding cells, to talk with Alaric, I guess. He's part of your family too?”

Magdalena had frozen at the mention of another cousin. There was only one other Saltzman around here, and...

And Meredith Fell had just said the name.

Theodoric had been insufferable about Alaric, lately, so much that Landyn had increased her supervision, suspicious when he had left to Mystic Falls. So far, he had only murdered one person, which in itself wasn't so bad, considering. But what did he want with Ric now, when their cousin was trapped in a cell?

“Theodoric?!”

Sheriff Forbes and Meredith Fell watched dumbfounded as the lawyer raced into the police station, but soon followed her. The red head seemed to go for the holding cells, and how the hell did she know where those were? For a second, Liz entertained the idea Magdalena Haguenhauer had taken a look at the layout of the station before coming, in case she had to break her cousin out.

It wouldn't be so surprising if this was the truth.

There was no one near the holding cells, and that was definitely weird.

Rectification: there was no one conscious near the holding cells, and that was definitely alarming. Meredith rushed to the knocked out sheriff deputy on the floor, and was relieved to see he was alive, though he'd have a large bump at the back of his head for a while. He didn't have his gun.

Liz and the lawyer entered the room with the cells, and saw a history teacher fighting off his deranged cousin trying to choke him out. Magdalena sweared loudly. Both Theo and Ric looked up.

“What the hell are you doing, Theodoric?!”

“You all said, and him the first, I was an inconvenience for the family. But think about it, Magdalena. Whether he is guilty or not, and I don't believe he is, for he'd have done a better job than this, Alaric is the one causing trouble right now. I've watched him, and the best one can do for the family is to get rid of him. So that's exactly what I am doing.”

Alaric rolled his eyes and freed himself with a well-placed nudge of his elbow. The talking had allowed him to take back his breath, and he wasn't going to let Theo murder him any time soon.

Liz wasn't sure what was going on, but the young man with the eye patch raised the gun he had taken from the deputy and aimed. Why he hadn't used it first, she couldn't guess.

Gunshot. Blood.

Alaric ducked, and reached for Theodoric's boot. His hand closed around the handle of a stiletto knife. He rolled on his side as his cousin aimed again. Magdalena grabbed the sheriff's gun.

Second gunshot. Theodoric fell, a red hole in his forehead, and a blade sticking out of his chest.

 

 


	34. For I have to go before I faint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed things, obviously, and so what happens in 3x17 to Alaric won't happen, it already did in this version of the story. Not exactly the same, so no need to freak out if someone does something else than what they were supposed to do, it's not my memory nor yours failing, just, you know, changes.  
> And just imagine he'll spend more time locked up in a room ( with Damon? Hum... ) to make up for the time I deleted by avancing the timeline.

Elizabeth Forbes stared at the dead man on her holding cells' floor.

There was a corpse in her police station. There was a fresh corpse in her police station. There was a killed corpse in her police station. And the killers were there too, and they were talking as if this kind of things was perfectly normal. And the killers and the corpse were all cousins. Or, actually, they had been cousins, for the corpse wasn't much now, and it sure as hell was nobody's cousin anymore. Not that Theodoric Saltzman wasn't Alaric Saltzman's and Magdalena Haguenhauer's cousin anymore, but the corpse wasn't Theodoric Saltzman anymore, so it could hardly be his two killers' cousin. At best, it was Theodoric Saltzman's corpse, but not Theodoric Saltzman himself, because Theodoric Saltzman was dead, and so, not here amongst the living anymore.

Unless someone had given him vampire blood in the last few hours, which would be unlikely in any other city than Mystic Falls, but incidentally enough, they were in freaking Mystic Falls' police station, and with Liz's luck, it could totally be.

The sheriff had stopped breathing for a while now, but since the corpse wasn't coming back from the dead, maybe she could assume it was safe now and start breathing again.

She wasn't optimistic enough, yet, to believe this ended her problems, for there was a fresh corpse in her police station, and she knew the killers, and if anything that would be a lot of paperwork.

Elizabeth breathed in and breathed out. She was calming down, now. She had been faced with vampires, werewolfs, and witches, and she could totally handle a dead man in her holding cells.

So she looked at the two cousins scrouching next to their other cousin.

They didn't seem really disturbed by the fact that they had killed a family member. The sheriff could understand not liking a family member, but still. They didn't even seem disturbed by having killed someone. Then again, after what Damon Salvatore and the history teacher had told her this very morning, maybe she ought not to be surprised.

Behind them, a door closed, and Liz turned around to see who had entered her murder scene.

It was Meredith Fell, who was currently lunging for Elizabeth's belt and the bunch of keys that was hanging from it.

“Sorry, Sheriff, but gunshots in a police station are bound to attract people, and by that I don't mean only your deputies. As it is, I'd feel better if the door was locked until we agree on a story.”

And the young doctor snatched the keys away from an utterly shocked Elizabeth Forbes, before going back to the door which she double locked.

As she observed the sheriff and the doctor, Magdalena raised an eyebrow. What was it with this city, really? She turned to Alaric, but her cousin only shrugged, as if this was the usual thing to do when someone had been both stabbed and shot to death in a police station, that is, to lock everyone in and make up a believable story without actually panicking.

Of course, she wasn't surprised by Ric's lack of panicking, as a death was nothing to him or herself.

And the sheriff looked reasonably shocked, but not really dumbstruck enough not to argue with the medical examiner, who didn't look disturbed at all. And they weren't Saltzmans. And Magdalena doubted this situation was usual, even for a town as weird as Mystic Falls.

She then looked back at her other cousin, her dead-and-soon-to-be-buried cousin now.

Sure, she couldn't say she was happy that he had died. Hell, she was even pretty upset to have been the one who had pulled the trigger, and if the situation hadn't been so dire, she wouldn't have done it. But Theodoric had left her no choice.

“How in hell am I to explain that to Landyn, now? 'Hey, auntie, Ric walks free, as expected, but Theo got mad and tried to kill him, so I killed him instead! Are those pancakes?'? Sounds great.”

“Actually, Mag, I believe we both killed him at the exact same time.”

The lawyer frowned as she looked at Ric again, for his voice had been a bit strange.

“I agree that we hit him simultaneously, Ric, but a bullet in the brain kills faster than a knife in the heart. So factually, I killed him.”

The history teacher rolled his eyes. Unlike Magdalena, he didn't feel the slightest annoyance at Theo's death, for if it hadn't been the hitman, it'd have been him. And the guy had been messing with his life for quite a long time, too.

“Facts are, both wounds are deathly, and inflicted with the intent to kill. So whatever killed him first, we both are in to explain... that, to Landyn.”

After having finally got back her keys, the sheriff was listening to the conversation between the two cousins with Meredith. Saying she wasn't unnerved by it would have been a lie.

“It is neither the place nor the time to speak of such things, Mister Saltzman, Miss Haguenhauer!”

Two gazes fell on her, and Liz refrained from shivering at their coldness.

Without a warning, a sly smile invaded the local history teacher's face, and he looked back at his lawyer of a cousin.

“Could you give the sheriff her gun back, Magdalena?”

The red head frowned at this, but did as she was told. Alaric followed the gun with his eyes as they landed back in Elizabeth Forbes' holder.

He looked up to her face, and met her eyes.

“Congratulations, Sheriff Forbes. You just took out a hitman and seven serial killers with one shot.”

Elizabeth Forbes gasped. All of a sudden, she just yelled every thought that was passing by her brain at the moment.

“You killed him?! He was your cousin! And what do you mean, an assassin and seven serial killers?!”

Oh, there was the panic attack, Magdalena thought. It had been quite delayed, but everything was coming back into place.

Yet, she scowled at Ric for what he had just said. They didn't need a sheriff to know that kind of things! But the history teacher only arched an eyebrow at her, as if defying her to deny it.

“Come on, Mag, it's the truth, even if no one will ever find any conclusive evidence. And even if it was possible, the sheriff Forbes won't say a thing about it, will you? And yes, I meant exactly what I said. Believe me, it would be better if you just played along. Theodoric won't kill anyone else now, and neither will Mobile Maker, Tom the Hangman, the Widower, Lady Chance, Black Player, the Sobriety Merchant, and Flipcoin. They were his aliases, fictional serial killers he had created to hide his contracts as a hitman. And no, I never went to the police, because I had no proof of what I know, and the family wouldn't have appreciated.”

Magdalena felt very angry he was telling the sheriff everything, but as she felt like this, she noticed two things.

First, Elizabeth Forbes was nodding silently, shocked but apparently resigned to keep everything that had transpired a secret, even if she didn't like it. The woman surely had a secret herself, or the lawyer couldn't see why she would comply to Alaric's demand. That had to be a pretty big secret.

Second, Ric really had difficulties speaking.

The history teacher got up on his feet, and her cousin suddenly knew why he was sounding off.

The first bullet, Theodoric's bullet, hadn't completely missed its target, or rather, said target hadn't managed to evade the bullet efficiently enough. Yes, he was alive. No, he wasn't unarmed.

The bullet had missed the heart, but it had found the man's side.

Before Magdalena could say anything, the teacher winced and walked to the door.

“Now that we agreed, I say you, Sheriff Forbes, found him just as you actually found him, that is, ready to kill me, and you shot him with your gun, and not Mag. It wouldn't do for you to have your gun taken away so easily by a lawyer, and it would be better for Magdalena if she wasn't officially involved. Someone thinks of something to explain the knife, for I have to go before I faint.”

Liz nodded. He was right. She turned to the body, hating to have to manipulate a crime scene once again. It was bad enough with the werewolves and vampires and hybrids doing whatever they wanted to whoever had the misfortune of meeting them...

Magdalena, though, wasn't going to let her cousin bleed to his death. She had lost one already this day, and she didn't fancy a jointed burial. She rushed to Alaric, and blocked the door with her shoulder as he unlocked it.

“Ric! Where do you think you're going?!”

“To the hospital. Where else?”

Oh, so he was actually planning to do that. Good...

Meredith Fell walked to the two cousins, and to their surprise, forced the history teacher's left arm over her neck.

“I'll take him. I work at the hospital, and I have my car parked nearby. Could you please phone Damon Salvatore? He's Ric's boyfriend, and he'll want to know.”

The doctor handed Magdalena her cellphone, with the number registered in it, and didn't wait for an answer. She didn't have time to spare, and could only hope she wasn't going to regret her decision to get Alaric to the hospital.

After all, she knew what was really the problem with the teacher.

Besides the wound, that is.

Not that the wound wasn't serious or anything. It was kind of actually very serious, and Alaric really needed help with that, or else she wasn't sure he'd be on his two feet again anytime soon. Well, maybe not life-threatening even if not taken care of right away, but grave enough that it could become a problem.

Yet, now that she thought of it, if the hunter was incapacitated for a while, it could be kind of great, as in, she'd be able to study his case, maybe even help him, and all that without running the risk of him snapping back into hunter-mod and scouting the city for victims.

Yeah, right, and she had already shot him and got him in jail for hours. Great idea. Meredith didn't want Ric to hate her, she wanted to help him overcome the Samantha-Gilbertish-madness-that-came-with-the-death-cheating-ring.

Once they got safely to her car, not without Meredith snapping at the deputies who had tried to keep them inside the police station for interrogation when the history teacher was obviously bleeding on their floor, the doctor settled Alaric on the back seat as she could.

As soon as the car left the parking of the police station, Meredith heard Ric's voice.

“What was that about, Meredith?”

Better play dumb for now. Who knew? Maybe he'd drop it, and she wasn't feeling like talking about it and telling him he was turning crazy because of how many times he had died right now.

“You need the hospital. You said so yourself. You certainly can't get there by yourself. I'm taking you there. I figured that was obvious enough.”

Meredith could have sworn she heard the teacher roll his eyes.

“That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it. Why do you help me to the hospital, after having shot me, healed me with vampire blood, and accused me of serial murder?”

Gah. He wasn't going to drop it.

“Right... Maybe it's not the right time to be talking about tha...”

“Meredith.”

“Okay, okay, I surrender! I just gave the sheriff a false report saying you couldn't have done it because the time of death had been wrongly estimated for the first murder. I had to get her on your tracks, and then get you out of suspicions. We Fells have always been nosy, and I recently found amongst my ancestors' collection of things-that-shouldn't-be-in-their-possession-in-the-first-place-but-are-nonetheless a diary of one Samantha Gilbert who went mad after dying too many times with the Gilbert ring on. At the same time, members of the Council were murdered one by one.”

There was a silence at the back of the car.

Meredith couldn't exactly blame Alaric for that.

“Are you actually saying I'm suffering from an alternate personality that not only murdered your ex and Caroline's father, but me too, that is, himself?”

Said like that, she had to admit... But that didn't make it any less true.

“He did it just when Elena came back, and I'm sure he knew she would kill you to be sure you'd come back if she had to.”

Meredith parked next to the hospital, and turned in her seat to see if the history teacher was still conscious. He was conscious. And looked furious.

Two hands closed around her neck. She couldn't breath. Ric was strong for an injured man.

“I hate that you discovered about me, Meredith, but you were on the list too anyway.”

The hunter. Not Alaric. Not Ric.

Suddenly, the hands came loose. The doctor could breath again. She saw a blurry face. Damon's.

 


	35. Our crimes are mine as well as his

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Up to 3x19

Meredith took a deep breath, and then looked at the still form of Alaric Saltzman on the back seat.

He was only knocked out. Good. The teacher definitely didn't need to die once more, for each time he had died had most likely messed with his brain a bit more, and that badly enough to create an evil alter-ego hell bent on eradicating every kind of supernatural creatures that was a danger to humanity or had the potential to help/create others potential non-human threats. That is, vampires, werewolves, hybrids, but not only. Cursed people who, such as himself, were a danger to the normal human being. Witches, who had created those monsters, too. And maybe, if he had time, the people who covered up the supernatural side of the world.

Meredith looked at Damon Salvatore, who had just destroyed the door of her car to stop his lover from strangling her. She decided she wasn't going to hold it against him.

The vampire looked quite surprised at the situtation he had just preveted from going astray.

“Could I get an explanation now?”

The doctor got out of her car, wincing.

“The murders. It happened before. Samantha...”

“Samantha Gilbert, I know. But what does it have to do with Ric?”

“Gilbert ring. Died too often, went mad, started murdering people her alter-ego considered to have failed the town's people.”

Damon raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“Alter-ego?”

“Later. Since you're here, give him some of your blood. And help me get him to the scan room. I'd want to see if there is anything scientific about the madness. If yes, maybe we can help him with the right medication.”

Damon said nothing about her wish to drug Alaric, because she was right. They needed to do something about this alter-ego, and simply telling Ric about him would surely not suffice.

There was nothing visible on the scans, and in the end they called Bonnie to the rescue. The witch was busy with her mother's turning, and Caroline promised she'd take the herbs back to Mystic Falls. Alaric was under watch, and he felt particularly bad when it was the blond's turn to watch him. Magdalena had decided she'd stay in Mystic Falls for the time being, and he had been lucky enough for her visits to coincide with most of Caroline's watchs. Though, lucky was an approximative adjective, since his cousin had started questioning him about the strangeness of Mystic Falls. If the teacher wasn't careful enough, there would soon be another Saltzman in the know in town, and he wasn't sure it was a good idea.

Nonetheless, each time he saw Caroline... He had killed her father, for God's sake!

They both were at the boarding house, Damon having decreeted he wouldn't let his favorite hunter to brood in his loft when there was everything they needed at his home. Books, and much alcohol. And a comfy king-sized bed to do things.

The vampire had been rather put out when he had been told they wouldn't be doing things.

But he hadn't complained, when Alaric had pointed out the hunter could very well come out while they'd be doing things, or that, actually, it could very well have already happened.

As kinky as it sounded, Damon had not fancied the idea of being at the mercy of the vampire hater/hunter if he decided to appear when he'd have his legs spread and Ric's cock deep into his ass.

But for now, Damon was busy making how-to-kill-an-Original-in-seven-simple-steps plans, and it was Caroline's turn to make sure Alaric wasn't going back to being an evil bastard whose dearest wish was to see them all dead.

And the vampire couldn't help but feel torn between anger and pity for her history teacher.

Pity, because he had no way of stopping his alter-ego.

From what she knew, he had always had a difficult life, being a Falkenbach and all, and then with Isobel and Mystic Falls and everything. He had often needed to battle against himself, his ease with killing, and coming to the small town hadn't helped. Here, he had to kill often, because it was kill or be killed. His victims here were vampires, mostly, and that was alright, and at the same time it wasn't, because the man had learned they weren't all evil, and sometimes he had the temptation to end all his problems with humans as he did with vampires, to protect the ones he cared for, to make the men and women who knew and could talk shut up. But Alaric Saltzman had never had to fight a man that was himself and yet didn't care about the same things, a man who was here when he wasn't, and wasn't here when he was.

Anger, not because he had killed her father, that was the hunter's doing, but because he wouldn't see it wasn't his fault, in fact.

It wasn't as if he had asked to be killed so may times he'd turn crazy.

Caroline looked one last time at the man lying on the Salvatores' sofa with a grim expression on his face before deciding she had had enough of his attitude.

“Don't look like that, Ric. It's not your fault.”

The teacher looked at the young vampire, and there was self-hatred in his eyes.

“Of course it is. I did it.”

“Your body did it. The hunter did it. You didn't.”

And that was true. Alaric had been nowhere near conscious when the hunter had acted. When he had killed the medical examiner, when he had killed her father, when he had put himself on the edge of life and death to force Elena to finish him off, the teacher hadn't known.

Maybe that explained why he had told them of Klaus mentioning a conversation he didn't recall.

Caroline pushed the Original Hybrid out of her head. Well, she tried, at least.

No matter how many time she told him “no”, he came back, and now he was doing the exact same thing even when he wasn't present. Caroline was sure it wasn't good news.

Even if Tyler and her were growing away since he had become a hybrid. Seriously, the guy was going back to the asshole he had been before triggering his lycanthropy.

Klaus, on the other hand, had always been the same bastard, and...

And it was definitely not the time to think about the bastard.

Caroline refocused on the conversation.

“Even if what you say was true, Caroline, the hunter is still part of me. He's something, someone I could have become if things had turned out differently. He's someone I became, or else he wouldn't be here. It's not because I'm here too, that he isn't me. We are two versions of the same person, and our crimes are mine as well as his. And the worst is that I'm no regular human. I have the skills, the strength and the instincts to murder someone as easily as to make tea. And so, he has said skills, strength and instincts. The only thing that made me human, and not only a monster, was that I didn't have the will to kill. But he does.”

Yeah, right, that was problematic, but nothing they couldn't handle.

“We have Bonnie's herbs. You'll be alright, and we'll get rid of of the hunter sooner or later.”

“Just make sure it's before I kill someone else.”

Alaric had only mumbled the last part, but he had no doubt Caroline had heard him. And not to his surprise, she didn't let him get away with it.

The young vampire knew she had to say something, so she talked. She talked, about things she'd better forget. She talked about the first and only innocent she had killed, and how, then, she had understood that no matter what she pretended, she wasn't the same anymore, and would never be again. She talked about the time she had had to kill two deputies right before her mother, to save the Salvatores brothers, and that even if she knew they weren't angels either, and made no distinction between vampires, all monsters, all evil, she also knew they probably had a family, and people who needed them out there. She talked about the looks her mother had given her in the cell underground the boarding house, the days that had followed. She talked about things she didn't even knew she was disturbed about, and soon enough, as she talked about Tyler, she stopped talking all of a sudden.

She had been about to talk about Klaus' gifts.

Alaric couldn't ignore it, and for a while he forgot his own problems.

After half an hour of merciless prodding, the teacher was surprised enough by his interrogation to have a big smirk on his face. Sure, the Original Bastard wasn't the guy he'd have advised his student to date, then again, it wasn't his business, and it was always better to know your true feelings. That way, maybe Caroline could get rid of them.

Or maybe not.

But if she had remained ignorant, they'd surely have stayed in the back of her mind, without being allowed to get out. You don't open your door to someone you don't even know is here, be it to come in, or to get out.

Anyway, for now, Caroline was the one gasping with a glass of bourbon in her hand. She wasn't sure when she had started drinking in her tales, but she sure as hell knew why, now.

“Oh my God I'm falling for Klaus! Someone tell me I'm crazy, please!”

She sent the history teacher a pleading look, but he shrugged it off.

“Don't look at me. I'm dating a guy who killed me twice. I'm no example.”

Unfortunately for her, they had a visitor, and the windows were open for some reason. The visitor had heard it all with his super-damned-vampire-way-too-cheated-hearing. He had been searching for Caroline Forbes, and still didn't know why she was confined with the Falkenbach, but he couldn't say he wasn't pleased by what he had heard so far.

So, being way too pleased with himself, Klaus rang the doorbell of the boarding house.

He couldn't come in, but that didn't mean he couldn't be sassy and invite the young blond vampire to dinner from the doorstep.

When the door opened on the Original's face, Caroline blinked, flushed, and thought of slamming the door right away.

She didn't have the time to do it.

“Look at him if that's all it takes for you to love me, sweetheart.”

Panic took over.

“You heard that! Oh my God he heard that!”

And she closed the door to his face.

Klaus shrugged. It wasn't as good as acceptance, but it was far from a refusal. He'd wait. He had time, after all, and so did Caroline. She wouldn't say no forever. He'd wait.

Even if that meant he'd have to behave about killing off her friends.

When Caroline got back to the library, the history teacher was back to brooding.

The next days proved to be rather hectic.

Then again, when were they not in Mystic Falls?

If Alaric had had to resume what happened during those days, he'd have said “shit happened, and then the end of the world”. Not refined, true, but far from wrong. Between learning that killing an Original killed all the bloodline, and surprise!, they didn't know who was Stefan's, Damon's and Caroline's sire!, forcing Stefan to threaten the hunter into revealing where the hell he had hidden the white oak stake, between Klaus learning about his alter-ego issue and Damon dealing as badly as ever with angry Originals, these days had been hell.

It was even worst that he couldn't really do anything to help, unless maybe kill himself, but Damon had gotten him off the vervain and compelled him not to do that, just in case.

Damn it.

Why had he fallen in love again?

_If there is one thing I agree with you about, Alaric that would be it. Why did you feel the need to fall in love with a monster, really? It's bad enough that you still are the strongest personality, but I also have to deal with my feelings for a vampire I am bound to obliterate. You swore to make our life hell, didn't you?_

The thought startled him, but Alaric didn't have the time to ponder about the fact that the hunter and hims had grown close enough for that to happen. If he had had the time, he'd have been terrified, for it meant the other one was about to take control permanently, for it meant the hunter would soon be Alaric Saltzman, and himself would only be a memory, somewhere in the madman's subconscious.

He didn't have the time, because Klaus was there and determined to get the hunter to talk.

It was quick, and painless.

But maybe it was because he was becoming accustomed to dying. Or because it was so quick he didn't have the time to register the pain. Alaric wasn't sure.

What he knew, on the other hand, was that he died a sixth time.

 


	36. A lesser evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3x19 and 3x20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: rant
> 
> I had planned to write this chapter wednesday. Blame my english teacher, according to who I "TRY to write in an elevated language, creating an impression of preciosity that is not welcome and only highlight your poor proficiency in writing english", roughtly translated.  
> Let me say one thing: I. Do. Not. Try.  
> I write like that. I don't TRY. (Obviously, I had tuned it down with the orality in my writing, since it was for school...)  
> Blast her.  
> And of course I'm not bilingual. If I was, I wouldn't be in her class. That does not mean I'm completely hopeless either. I like to think I'm not so bad, thank you very much.
> 
> Of course, I don't think she meant it to be insulting. But that's the thing with her, she doesn't notice when she says vexing things. I know that. Doesn't make it any less upsetting.
> 
> Tell me My writing style is so not Anglo-Saxon, and I will agree with you. But don't tell me it's precious, and never, never even attempt to tell me I'm TRYING to write like that. I don't.  
> Now, I'll let you read my poor english.

When Alaric woke up, he was still Alaric.

And that was relieving as well as disappointing. He knew they needed to get the hunter to talk, and even if he had been the one to suggest a more... direct way of contacting his alter-ego, the teacher still wasn't confortable with losing his body to a psychopath and that with no idea of when he'd get it back. If he ever got it back.

Such doubts.

Strange, weren't they? Why would he have doubts about the whole thing? Such a wonder.

But he had to do it. He had to let the hunter out, and have Stefan question him about the stake. He had to, if he wanted them to go on living. Even if there was a risk that he'd never come back.

If it proved to be necessary, they'd just have to kill him, and then take the ring away while he'd still be dead. Damon wouldn't be happy about it, but at least he'd be alive. Vampire-style. Undead. Whatever.

Ric wasn't going to ask anyone to live in perpetual fear that the hunter would one day get an opportunity to end another line of vampires.

True, they could just kill him right now, and the white oak stake would remain hidden where he had left it. Yet, the teacher was far from convinced no one would ever get their hands on it, and then... Depending who “someone” would be, it could be great or terrible.

He wasn't going to ask such a thing of them, to wait for the stake to come back into the game, and to kill hundreds of vampires in one go if the one using it was to be lucky in his tentative.

Of course, Alaric could see how that could be good, in a way. The hunter was him, and he was the hunter. They weren't complete opposites. They shared a past, if anything. And they knew very well that all vampires weren't as cute and nice as Stefan and Caroline. Well, when Stefan wasn't going all Riper, of course. And yes, the teacher had omitted his boyfriend in that thought, but it was totally intentional. Despite Damon's latest improvements, he still couldn't be considered as a cute and fluffy one.

Hell, that'd be frightening, if the vampire ever got to be considered that way.

Cute and fluffy?

Yeah right.

Anyway.

Alaric Saltzman knew getting rid of another vampire line would do much good. But unlike his half-crazed alter-ego, he also knew it would do as much evil. Not all vampires were bad, as not all vampires were nice. He wasn't willing to kill them all because some of them were bad. If he acted like that, he could as well kill his whole family, including himself, because there was always the risk one of them would turn out like Theodoric had. And even amongst those who weren't insane like Theo, there were a few who were still bad, for they used knowingly their indifference to do contract killings or similar deeds. So thinking like that, that all vampires should be exterminated, and no, thank you, he wasn't willing to let himself become a dalek, Doctor, get out of his mind this instant!, thinking like that would be hypocritical if he didn't turn against his own kind afterwards.

_But who said I had no intention of doing just that?_

Ah, the evil alter-ago was revealing himself. Would he be kind enough to go all the way and discuss with the nice vampire over there? Because Alaric was pretty sure the hunter wouldn't just tell him were he had hidden the last white oak stake just because he asked nicely.

_Damn right you are, Ric. And no, I have no intention to get out and discuss with your... friend. I have nothing to kill him with, and there is no gain in talking with him._

But that was where the evil-alter-ego-from-hell was wrong.

He certainly hadn't expected Alaric to go this far. The teacher had truly gone bonkers. No wonder he had appeared in the man's mind. “Alaric” couldn't be trusted with himself right now, or he'd have never asked a vampire notorious for his lack of control with his bloodlust to beat him to the edge of life in an underground cell with no one to call for help if said vampire lost it.

There really was something wrong with the current “Alaric”. He had to take over. Quickly.

Yet, the hunter believed the teacher would tell the Salvatore vampire to stop, if he was unsuccessful long enough that he'd really fear for his life. For a moment, as they both took in the punches and kicks, because after all, they only had one body, he wondered if, seeing the vampire continue to harm him regardless of his pleas for it to stop, Alaric would finally understand. For even if the monsters seemed to have some kinds of feelings, the hunter couldn't deny that anymore, not after Damon, not after their love, they still were monsters. The younger Salvatore brother seemed reluctant to hit very hard at first, and the hunter guessed it was because Alaric and him were friends. He seemed to hesitate quite a lot, actually.

But the hunter knew.

Stefan Salvatore was a monster, just like Damon. They may have had feelings, but nothing could overcome their true nature. Now that he had started, he wouldn't stop. And if Alaric didn't realize that pretty soon...

But the teacher was doing it on purpose. He wanted the hunter to come out, and the hunter had to say, it was tempting even if only to stop his face from further looking like a battered bloody steak.

Alaric started riling the vampire, and after a time, the monster couldn't take it anymore.

Punches. Kicks.

And yells.

Anger.

Alaric knew how to anger someone. He knew the words that hurt. He had no remorse using them. He knew, in the back of his mind, in something that sounded a lot like a conscience, but wasn't really, because it only worked in a cold, calculating way for those kinds of things, he knew it wasn't right. But he knew only because that was how the world was, how normal people were supposed to think. How he had seen them behave.

But Alaric was a Falkenbach, and if he wanted, he could just ignore the rational part of his brain, and go with the flow, with the practical part of it. He merely chose not to do it on a daily basis.

There was no such thing as feelings involved in doing what he did.

And he needed the hunter to come out and speak.

So for once, Ric would forget about the tiny voice of his self-made conscience.

Alaric really wasn't going to make it stop.

The hunter came out.

Nevermind ridding the world of all evil/supernatural freaks, he wouldn't kill even another normal vampire if he got himself killed for waiting too long. It wasn't as if any of the fanged monsters could get to the stake on their own, after all.

But he wasn't going to just tell them. He needed them to follow him in the cave, without knowing exactly where the white oak stake was. If he could make that happen, the hunter would be safe in the no-vampire area, and with the stake. Sure, they could get someone else, a lot less dead and so a lot more able to get in the guarded area of the secret cave, to come in, kill him, and hand over the stake. But it would be difficult, for there were few living beings who would be able to get rid of him. Some sport-freak, perhaps. One or two werewolves, too. But those had been driven out of town or made hybrids by Klaus. So, not there, or dead. That let only a witch, and so Bonnie.

Such a pity, the hunter thought. He kind of liked the young woman. But if she came after him...

Well, it wasn't as if she was not on list anyway.

Bonnie Bennett was a witch, and a friend to many monsters. She had to die, in the end.

So the hunter put up with a little more beating, until one Rebekah Mikaelson came to the boarding house, sulking at being ordered around by her brother.

Then, he thought that maybe, it was time to give in.

“Okay... I get it! You... want the stake. I'll show you where it... where it is.”

Blood was dripping from his lips, his teeth, his nose, and, overall, his whole face. His side was aching and he was certain he had at least two bruised ribs. And of course, his shoulder was aflame with pain due to his sixth death. On the bright side, he was in such a state he could barely feel it.

Oh well, to make a long story short, he felt like he could die any time. But he didn't care.

There was only one white oak stake left. He was going to go exactly where he had hidden it. Escorted by one of the Originals. And she wouldn't be able to take the stake away from him. There was only one Original he could kill with the stake before it burnt into flames.

Maybe he'd find another way, one day. Maybe another white oak would grow in Mystic Falls, in a few decades or centuries. It had happened before. Why wouldn't it happen again? He'd be dead by then, but if he could leave instructions... There was still a chance the world would one day be done with vampires.

If he could get to the cave, stake Rebekah Mikaelson, and go on his merry way murdering every other monster that wasn't an Original up till the end of his life, that would already be quite a lot.

Barbie Klaus' voice took the hunter back to the present.

“Hell no. If anything, you tell us where it is, then I decide whether or not I kill you right now or wait a bit, even if it is just to see if your original personality will ever come back, after all, we all need distraction, and in all my years I have never seen a case such as yours.”

The hunter spat some blood.

“As if. You don't have a choice. I won't tell you where this stake is, and it will take days for the vervain to completely leave my body. Unlike with a vampire, you can't drain me without killing me, and I'm not sure even the Gilbert ring can give me back my blood if you drain the vervain out.”

The Original squinted at him, a thoughtful look on her face.

“I'm sure I can figure out something, involving a lot of suffering, blood, and torture, that will make you talk. But I appreciate your concern.”

“You don't have time to waste with that. Klaus seemed very... eager to get the stake back and burn it. We both know he can be unsufferable when he doesn't get what he want. He wants it now, and he will not leave you alone if you take your time to play. So there is only one way. You following me to where I hid it, me bargaining for my life, and once the trade is over, I leave town for good.”

Barbie Klaus scoffed at that, but she looked like she was considering his offer. After all, she hadn't even wanted to take care of the white oak stake business, and Klaus had just said “go”, implying “before I get angry and unpleasant”. Not that she didn't want the stake to be destroyed. But if she could finish this early...

Or at least that was what her thinking process and faces looked like to the hunter.

“Alright. But...”

The Original Vampire left in a blur, and came back in the same fashion only one minute later.

She had a ring he knew too well in her hand.

“See that? I saw it last time I came over. I'm quite curious as to which one of you stole it from my dear brother... Anyway, I can't kill you if I want the white oak stake back. But if you do even one suspicious move, I'll shove it down your throat.”

The hunter eyed the amethyst ring warily, but well... It was still better than to be killed on the spot. And he suspected he was so sore it wouldn't be so terrible, all in all.

“Deal.”

So they went to the cave.

The hunter walked in the no-vampire-allowed area. And then came back with the stake.

Saying he was surprised when Rebekah Mikaelson got past the barrier would be an understatement. Saying he was surprised when she revealed herself to be Esther Mikaelson possessing her own daughter's body would be another understatement. But saying he wasn't pleased with her coming back to take care of her despicable offspring would have been a lie.

He accepted her offer, and lied to everyone, telling them he was taking some time off to work on destroying his alter-ego. It wasn't so much of a lie, actually. Alaric hadn't come back. He was still here, and the hunter could feel he wasn't yet the true “Alaric”, but he was close.

With her on his side, the hunter had a chance to get rid of every single Original, he thought as the witch made the last white oak stake indestructible, using the Gilbert ring. He didn't really like her plan to make him into an unkillable vampire to get there, but he'd be linked to Elena's life span, so it was a lesser evil.

She killed him. Without warning. Seventh time.

Now he knew why she hadn't told him exactly how the turning would go. He'd have been quite reluctant to agree, if she had. But at least, he'd soon kill all vampires in the world, and the witch that had created them. Esther wasn't the only one who kept things to herself.

 


	37. Walking on borrowed time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x20

It hurt.

And at the same time, it didn't.

Alaric felt like he was dying when he woke up.

That might have been because heactuallywas dead, yet wasn't.

The teacher looked down at his chest. That was where it felt strange. And what he saw confirmed it. It was bloody. Blood. His own. His blood. Out of his veins and arteries. Out of his body, on his ripped shirt. Out of his heart, because there had been a huge hole in it only minutes before.

He wasn't sure how he knew, because he couldn't remember anything after the hunter had taken over his body, but he had that feeling, that there should have been a hole in his chest, a hole right in his heart, and that it was the reason for all the blood.

Well, it seemed he had died. Again.

Alaric forced himself up, and it wasn't easy, for he felt heavy, very heavy, as if his bones were weighing one ton each. As if he wasn't supposed to be back up. As if he was supposed to stay put, because he was supposed to be dead, and dead people weren't supposed to stand up out of their own will ever again.

Alaric forced himself up, and it wasn't easy, because he felt too light too, as if he wasn't in his body, as if it was only his soul/mind/spirit/call-it-whatever-you-prefer that was standing up, and so his body didn't want to get up, because it wasn't part of him anymore. He was having trouble feeling his body, he realized, as if he wasn't really in it anymore.

Alaric forced himself up, and it wasn't easy, since he felt very heavy and too light at the same time.

This wasn't the usual resurrection process.

He tried to look around, to recognize the place, but for now, everything was just too bright... or too dark. He could only see pitch black pierced here and there by a yellow light. A bit as if he had a hangover, and yet not quite.

Ric squinted, and eventually managed to see something more than yellow and black. If he focused on the in-between...

This was the Salvatore crypt.

What was he doing in the crypt?

Last thing he knew, he was supposed to get the hunter out so that they could find the last white oak stake...

And now he was in the crypt, feeling he had died once more, and yet unable to remember, feeling this wasn't a normal resurrection, and by the way, when had resurrection become something normal? What had happened?

Alaric brought his hand to his face, and squinted harder. The candles were too bright, and the darkness was to somber. He couldn't see very well, but it was getting better.

He blinked.

Ric had died, he was sure of that. And now he was alive again, even if he wasn't feeling very well. But there was no Gilbert ring on his finger.

He brought the other hand before his eyes. Maybe he had put it on the wrong hand. With everything that had happened lately, he felt he had every right to be confused about one thing or two.

But what had happened lately?

He still wasn't sure.

Alaric blinked, and looked back to the first hand he had looked at. And then back at the second hand he had looked at. There was no ring.

And yet he wasn't dead anymore, and yet he was alive again.

A strange taste on his tongue caught his attention. He knew he was familiar with this taste, but... He couldn't tell what it was. As if it had become something else, not in itself, of course, but to him.

Ric froze. There were voices outside the crypt.

He knew these voices. But they weren't quite the same as before. It was as if they were louder, in a way, even if he knew they were not just near him. Not, not louder. Clearer, maybe.

The taste of blood in his mouth was soon forgotten as another taste invaded his mouth. Bitter. Bile.

So obvious. He wasn't dead. But it didn't mean he was alive either.

Undead.

Turning.

And no Damon Salvatore in sight. If his vampire of a boyfriend had anything to do with this...! But no, no Damon in sight. And Damon wouldn't have staked him in the heart, he would have broken his neck. And Damon would be there, to force-feed him if needed now that he was turning.

And Damon wasn't here, so he most likely had nothing to do with it. The hunter was the culprit, Alaric was sure of it, though he felt it was kind of illogical for the most-anti-vampire-cursed-guy-in-town to turn himself into a vampire.

Screams.

The voices outside had gone from whispers to screams of fear and despair.

He picked up the stake that was lying next to him, and recognized the white oak stake. Well, at least he now knew where it was. The only question being, why was it covered in metal?

Panic.

They were panicking, outside. He had no time to wonder about that. The stake was the only weapon he could use in the crypt, and he had nothing to destroy it right now, so he'd better join the screaming people out there, and if he could, put an end to it.

He thought he recognized Elena's, Jeremy's and Matt's voices. And another voice, but...

Who was it?

“He will end the horror I brought upon the Earth when I made my children into vampires, Elena. You can't stop it, and you shouldn't try. No one is supposed to escape death forever.”

He knew the voice. He knew it. It was a woman... a woman he had met, but a woman he had met before meeting her. It didn't make any sense... But he knew she had talked to him many times, before he had even got to meet her in Mystic Falls. He remembered her voice...

And the words that sounded so true when she talked, as if she was charming everyone with her voice alone. He knew these words... And the hunter knew them too. He was the one who had met her first. This woman... She had something to do with his latest death.

Alaric grabbed the white oak stake, and stood up, slowly, with difficulty, because his body was heavy. Or not really here. He wasn't sure. It wasn't that it really hurt. More like the ghost of a long forgotten pain. He knew, in his brain, that it hurt. His punctured heart. His scar that was certainly red and bulging. But in his body, he didn't quite feel it. It was there, and yet it wasn't.

He was dead, and yet he wasn't.

Actually, he wasn't even undead yet, because he hadn't completed the transition. He wasn't a vampire... Yet he wasn't dead nor alive. Walking on borrowed time.

“Mikael was a good Hunter, of course, but he was only a bit stronger than our children. He was an Original Vampire, and nothing more, with a slight difference in force due to his built. That's the reason he never managed to kill Klaus. He wasn't enough. But Alaric Saltzman... Not only did I make him even stronger than an Original Vampire, so that he'll be able to face the Original Hybrid, but he is a bearer of the Falkenbach Curse, a curse older than even vampires. Whispers were heard in all Europe when I was first alive. Even all the way to Norway, when they were from what has now become Germany. The Falkenbachs... They were humans, and yet, I believe they were as dangerous as werewolves when in human form.”

This woman... She was talking about him.

And she seemed to know things about his family he wasn't privy to.

Ric got out of the crypt, and saw the blond woman talking to Jeremy and Matt, who were pointing their weapons at each other and didn't seem to be able to stop. Next to them, Elena was panicking, trying to get Esther to stop whatever she was doing.

“If the legend is true, they are the greatest killers mankind will ever know. Considering how their curse came into existence, it wouln't be surprising. Alaric is the obvious choice to end the abomination I created. Once the hunter will have become 'Alaric', this story will end.”

Esther?

Esther.

The Original Witch. Even if it wasn't quite accurate, because it would have implied she was the first witch ever, which she wasn't. But she was the witch that had created the Originals, so maybe it could be called accurate, in another way?

Whatever.

She was the one who forced the boys to threaten the each other's life, and Alaric wasn't going to let her do that. She had done enough damage as it was.

He walked to them, slowly, with difficulty, and no one paid him any attention. He wasn't going to blame them, and frankly, it was for the best right now. It was almost too late, Esther was about to make the two boys shoot each other... It was almost too late...

The teacher caught her by the neck as he pushed the white oak stake in her back, killing her on the spot. He was pretty certain he had broken her spine in doing so.

The Original Witch fell to the ground, and he was left with three young people gaping at him. A pity, he could have asked her what she knew about the Falkenbachs. How they had been cursed in ancient times. And then, find a way to undo this curse.

Because there was always a loophole.

But for now, the loophole was laying dead in a cemetery, not that it wasn't an appropriate place to do just that, but still. Ric looked at the corpse at his feet, and then back to Elena and the boys.

What happened next wasn't a happy moment. When he asked why he was there, why the Gilbert ring had disappeared, Elena thought he hadn't understood he was in transition. So she explained to him everything that had happened, and he didn't tell her he had understood. It wouldn't do them any good. The stake coudn't be destroyed anymore, and he was going to die. For real, this time.

They tried to convince him to turn...

But he wouldn't.

If he did, he knew the hunter would take over before long, and no one would be safe. An enhanced Original with the Falkenbach Curse and a white oak stake that cannot be destroyed? If the hunter completed the transition, they were all doomed.

And even if he turned, he couldn't even fight against the hunter for control. He knew it. He didn't have much time left. The hunter would overcome him as soon as he'd feed. So he wasn't going to.

Elena called everyone that mattered, and they came from the decade dance, finally free of Esther's spell. It was almost humoristic how many of them were his students, or supernatural beings. Or both. It was definitely not a regular funeral wake. Then again, not many people could be present at their own funeral wake without faking their death. And not many people had died seven times before it came to this.

When they left, Alaric went back inside the crypt, and Damon joined him.

They sat and the vampire took out a bottle of bourbon.

“Do I get a last kiss?”

Ric snorted. He wasn't going to be fooled.

“Certainly not. You'd be able to force-feed me by regurgitation of someone's blood. We both know I can't afford that.”

There was a silence, as they both looked far in the distance. Damon as well as Ric knew without a doubt there was no deeper meaning to their behavior, besides avoiding to look at the other's face.

“You could try, at least.”

“Even if I turned, Damon, it wouldn't be me anymore. And it would only be worst for you, because I know he loves you as much as I do... Only, the hunter would rather see you dead than a vampire. You wouldn't be able to do anything against him, and not only physically speaking. You know it.”

Alaric felt tears slip out of his eyes. It was terrible, when he thought about it. It was their last moment, and he couldn't find anything to say that wasn't reasoning.

He finally turned to Damon, and looked him in the eyes.

“It's strange, you know. I was never truly humane to begin with, and now that I am not a human being anymore... I feel more humane. Maybe it's death. Maybe it's because I will finally be like everyone else. Dead, in the end.”

Before leaving, Damon took Ric's head in his hands, and kissed his forehead.

Alaric finally felt the false life in him disappear, and he closed his eyes.

 


	38. This wasn't going to be pleasant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, by the way, last chapter Damon left just a bit earlier than in the show, so he missed Bonnie.

Damon looked at his glass a long time, and did nothing else. There was bourbon in it, and the vampire was certain it was all he needed to forget, even if only for a little while, what had happened to the man he loved. One glass of alcohol, and then another, and another again. It was all he needed.

But he only looked at the glass.

All he needed to get drunk was here, but he wasn't drinking, despite everything.

Some people said that drinking after a tragedy was a way to forget, and that continuing to do so afterwards was a way to stay unhappy on purpose, because happiness hurt more than grief, or so they thought. Damon couldn't deny there was something contenting in misery. A feeling that no matter what others may say, one is the only person who can truly understand what was ultimate misfortune. An impression that one is different from others, who can only guess what one is experiencing. Unhappy, but better, or worse, than anyone else. Different.

But the vampire didn't want to forget, that night, that Alaric was lying dead in his family crypt. He didn't want to revel in his misery thanks to drunkness.

It didn't mean he was ready to move on.

Just that if he wanted to revel in his misery, it wasn't in a drunken stupor.

So he stared at the glass, and drank nothing of it. If he had felt bad, he would have drunk. But he only felt angry, and filled with a lot of sarcasm.

Damon Salvatore truly wasn't supposed to get his happy ending.

The vampire was still staring intently at the glass of bourbon, arms crossed and under his chin, himself sprawled on a table at the boarding house, when something happened.

He couldn't have said what, because he didn't care. Alaric was dead, and had killed the real culprit before leaving for the afterworld. Damon couldn't even murder Esther in some gruesome manner or another to vent out the part of him that was angry. The other parts were, respectfully, sad, lost, desperate, and in denial.

So he didn't go to the front door when the bell rang.

Stefan, who had been glancing awkwardly at his brother for the past hour, shifting on his chair and unable to focus on the book he had taken as an excuse to stalk Damon, remembered too well what had happened when the older vampire had been bitten by a werewolf last year. He was determined to keep an eye on Damon, but still went to the door... hoping his brother wouldn't do anything stupid meanwhile.

Not that Damon had made a habit of doing stupid things. Apart from killing people he shouldn't kill. Upsetting people he shouldn't upset. Destroy things he shouldn't destroy.

Right. Damon's plans usually went south no matter how well planed. But there, it wasn't about planning things, and if Stefan left his brother alone, the vampire was totally able to play the suicide card without anything going south. Because usually, the plans that went well were those that were supposed to hurt people to begin with.

For years, Stefan had believed his brother to be unbreakable, and he would have laughed at the prospect of Damon killing himself. Last year had changed his beliefs. He suspected that meeting Alaric had changed Damon in a good way... but also into fragility.

Stefan sighed and opened the door.

It was Bonnie waiting outside, a hand on her neck...

And the unmistakable smell of blood.

“Bonnie, what has happened?!”

Stefan looked at the young woman, and she had fear in her eyes. This wasn't going to be pleasant. He didn't know what it was going to be, but it wasn't going to be pleasant.

He heard Damon coming to them, maybe mildly curious about why Bonnie was all bloody in his house. Mildly only, because he had more interesting things to mope about. Curious, still, because... Well, because.

Bonnie opened her mouth to answer, but she paled when she saw Damon behind Stefan. What would he say? Would he be glad, despite the obvious problem, or would he be furious that in the end, Alaric had lost his fight against the hunter? If “Alaric” was still alive, there was a chance they could still get Alaric back. Bonnie doubted it, truthfully, though she knew there was always a loophole. She doubted it, because no matter how things went from now on, they surely wouldn't have the time to find said loophole. And if “Alaric” was alive, it also meant that an unkillable vampiric psychopath cursed to be the perfect killer was walking around in the body of Damon's beloved. Sure, it was still “Alaric”, in a way, and from what they knew he liked them as much as the original Alaric did, but he hated them at the same time, and wouldn't back away from killing them all for the sake of his own feelings.

The young witch removed her hand from her neck, and looked back at Stefan. She couldn't look at Damon.

“The hunter fed. He's still out there.”

One second before, the glass of bourbon had been in Damon's hand.

Now it was shattered on the floor, and Damon's pants were soaked with alcohol.

There was a long silence.

Then Damon got himself back in the game, and there was a hard edge to his voice.

“Don't tell me you suddenly felt the urge to ensure our utter destruction.”

“The spirits of the witches possessed me to go and feed him. I think I arrived there just after you left, Damon, but I'm not sure. It was as if I was in a dream.”

“Your stupid magic ancestors have once again got in the way! Great! Well then, you'll ask them to help in undoing their mess, because we now have a vampire that is possibly more dangerous than Klaus to deal with. I mean, sure, we could just run away and let the Originals deal with him, since they're surely his primary targets, but there's still a problem. Our sire dies, and we're all caput.”

The hours after that went in a fog for Damon. Everything was so clear, his mind was so clear, it was almost transparent, almost non-existent, actually. The vampire acted, and that was all. He certainly said some snarky remarks, but it was as if he wasn't really the one saying them.

He was here. His body was there.

They heard about Alaric's whereabouts through Rebekah, and they had to say, it wasn't pleasant news. Esther had made it difficult enough with her choice to make a Satlzman into an enhanced Original, but as she hadn't had a white oak to bound his life to, the white oak stake was no good against the hunter. It didn't even have the basic good point of a normal stake on a normal Original, that is, temporary death. Good news, though, he didn't like the sun anymore than any other vampire. Bad news, he could withstand it, settling with constant combustion countered by accelerated healing instead of simple, definitive combustion.

Well, “they had to say” didn't include Damon, because he was on autopilot.

So now the hunter was in the school, and not grading paper. His current activities were more like torturing student / vampire / namely-Caroline-Forbes. And making Elena watch. And waiting for Klaus to come and try to get his Petrova doppelganger back. Let's not forget waiting for Klaus. While torturing Caroline. But waiting for Klaus came first, of course.

Torturing Caroline in the meantime.

This part was what didn't make it with Klaus, who had decided he wanted his spare tire, his flashlight, his Petrova doppelganger, and his potential girlfriend with him before leaving town. He didn't like the part where the hunter wanted him to let himself get killed, of course. But what he had heard lately from an unsuspecting Caroline had been giving him hope, and he didn't like the torturing-Caroline-Forbes part at all.

Allying themselves with Klaus came as some sort of relief, and at the same time it was alarming. Not because they were allying themselves with Niklaus Mikaelson, thought that fact was parlous in itself, but because if the Original Hybrid was strong, he was also the only thing that kept most of them alive: the creator of their bloodline.

All in all, Damon was doing as he was told.

Which meant, he was about to go along with Bonnie's plan, and hell, how he had come to hate the word “plan” lately, and enter a building with the crazed alter-ego of his boyfriend in it. He took the blood sample from the witch, and didn't ask anything. He knew the plan. Actually, it even gave him a little hope. Not much, but still. If they kept Alaric desiccated for long enough, maybe he'd come back to reason.

He deliberately ignored the part of his mind that reminded him of Hans and his killing sprees each time he managed to get out of desiccation.

They went in.

Damon wasn't sure how it came to this, but at some point, he and Stefan found the hunter and Elena. Elena had been raising a valid point: why was he not killing her, if she was such a traitor to the human race?

But Damon didn't care, and still on autopilot, he did what he had to do. He fought.

Unsurprisingly, he was far from a challenge for the hunter, who had more strength and speed than even an Original, and whose fighting instincts and skills were those of a Falkenbach. Before they knew it, Stefan's neck was broken, and before he knew it, his own was too.

What happened after, he couldn't tell, but at some point his spin went back into place, and he heard the sound of a cellphone buzzing. He opened his eyes.

And saw Alaric, sitting next to him, looking at him intently. In his eyes, there were both deep hatred and incommensurable love. The “Why am I still alive?” froze on Damon's lips.

He knew this was the hunter...

But it was also Alaric, and not a dead Alaric, not a lifeless Alaric. An Alaric full of extreme feelings, not exactly his Alaric, but not a stranger either. Some kind of caricature of the Alaric he had first met, who had wanted his death more than anything else, and who had been human.

Stefan woke up too, and the hunter with Ric's face told them they had to stop Klaus from killing Elena, because she was his anchor into the afterlife.

When he let them go, Damon couldn't get up, and so he stayed still on the floor while Stefan was rushing outside to find Bonnie and save Elena, who had definitely no luck in life.

The hunter had not stopped staring at him. He hadn't moved at all. He was still sitting next to him.

“I told you to go and save Elena.”

“Alaric...”

His voice was pleading, Damon knew that, but he wasn't concerned about it. For once, he didn't care if he had to beg, if he had to supplicate. Ric was here, he knew it. It wasn't just the hunter, some stranger. It was Ric, only a Ric that had followed another road. The hunter and Ric were the same person, with the same past, the same feelings. The hunter was just brainwashed.

He could get Alaric back.

He had to believe it.

“Go.”

But Damon couldn't get up. Not now that Alaric was looking at him. Not now that Alaric was alive.

“Ric, please! You have to be ther...!”

Damon didn't get to finish his plea, for the hunter had pulled him up from the floor and was now kissing him with fierce passion. The older vampire froze when he felt the veins bulging under his lover's eyes and against his skin, when two fangs grazed his lips.

The hunter backed away, in shock, panting and way too alluring vamped out like that.

“Alaric, don't...!”

“I hate what you are, Damon. Not who you are. And I will kill you, because you deserve to be freed from this abomination that is vampirism. I love you, but you deserve better than this!”

Damon stayed still, completely unable to speak or think. He stared at the hunter, and this time, he was sure Ric was still somewhere in there, he just had to...

But the hunter couldn't do what he had just told the older vampire, and his feelings got the better of him once again. His feelings, and his new condition.

He leaned towards Damon, and bit. His eyes were closed for a second, as he forgot about everything else. When he opened them again, they were hard with a terrible resolve.

He spoke as he wiped the blood off his face, and Damon knew he had to run. Only, he couldn't.

“The damned witch was right. I can't kill you like that... And I can't switch off my feelings, because I'm still a Falkenbach. Then, I guess I'll just have to use it...”

The hunter took out the amethyst ring that suppressed all humanity in a Saltzman's mind, and swallowed it.

 


	39. Until nightfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set in 3x22

Alaric had swallowed the ring. He had swallowed it. No more feelings. Nothing to stop him from...

Damon wrestled himself away from the hunter, and ran for it. He shouldn't have been able to, but if the amethyst ring had one capacity he was currently thankful for, it was that while it took away every single shred of humanity in a Falkenbach, it also caused them great pain for an instant. And the hunter hadn't just touched the ring for one instant, which would have caused intense pain and turned off his feelings for a few seconds. He had swallowed the thing, certainly to make it so his humanity wouldn't come back and prevent him from killing Damon.

The hunter's scream resonated in the whole school, and Damon ran.

The scream stopped. He wasn't out yet.

He pushed the door. He heard the hunter blurring after him.

Damon leapt into the sunlight.

He turned around, and saw the expressionless face of Alaric Saltzman, vampire hunter and enhanced Original, cursed man and inhumane foe. The unkillable vampire was standing just at the limit between shadows and light, and he was looking at him.

And this time, there was nothing, absolutely nothing in his eyes. No love, not even hatred.

The hunter talked, and his voice had no tone.

“Hold onto hope, Damon Salvatore, and save the girl. Your time will eventually come, but hope, and in doing so you will allow me to finish my task. You know that by saving her once again you'll ensure your undoing, but because you have hope, you will save her nonetheless. Go. You have until nightfall, and then the Originals will all be dead, and you alongside them.”

And the hunter did not move, staring at him in all his inhumanity.

This time, Alaric was gone for good.

Damon's heart shattered as he broke eye contact.

Alaric was gone.

He rushed to Bonnie's side, and they decided they'd use the spell she had tried to use against the hunter on Klaus, since he was likely to kill Elena now that he knew he couldn't best the hunter. Tyler agreed to participate, and no one missed how he was avoiding looking at Caroline, who herself didn't look pleased with their decision to desiccate Klaus, but said nothing, because she saw no other way to save her friend. No one missed that, except Damon, who was still too shaken by the absolute blankness he had just witnessed in Alaric's eyes.

Out of despair, he called a number he hadn't called in years, not since he had done something that had upset her so much he feared for his life next time they'd see each other. His life was already on the line, and Ariane was too far away to do much damage before the hunter managed to kill them all. And well, Ariane was still a friend, even though she might have liked his head on a spike for her birthday gift.

If there was one person who knew how to deal with nearly immortal supernatural beings, it was Ariane. She was older than anyone he knew, and had seen a great deal. Maybe she knew something he could do, be it in killing the newest Original or saving his sanity.

But Ariane didn't answer her phone, and Damon ended up leaving a message that surely sounded like a bunch of insanities.

What happened next was to him like a blur. Klaus, Elijah, Alaric, Jeremy, and finally the phone call. Driving out of Mystic Falls with Bonnie and Klaus' coffin to hand over to Rebekah. Waiting alone.

What drove him out of the blur was the unexpected sound of the hunter's voice instead of Rebekah's, and Damon more or less jolted back into consciousness.

As the murderous Original checked all the storage lockers, the older vampire made his way to the entrance he knew Rebekah would use, hoping to get to her before the hunter did. But he was too late, and she had already started calling for him, saying it was hardly the time to play hide and seek, and she was surprised he even had the heart to do so after all that had happened. Damon wouldn't ask how she knew about his relationship with the psycho that was trying to murder them all.

The sound of the lockers being opened stopped, and Damon grabbed and gagged Barbie Klaus before she got staked with the white oak stake.

Together they had almost got Klaus' coffin out, but the hunter finally found them, and staked the desiccated body.

There was a scream, and Rebekah's despair. There was the fear in Damon's eyes.

She ran away. He stayed behind.

He was dead anyway. His sire had died, and he was going to do as much very soon. And even if he hadn't been, Alaric was too far off, and way too strong for him to fight for his life.

Damon let himself fall to the ground, and he looked up at the hunter, who was still before the coffin with the body in it. Strangely, it hadn't completely burned, but all in all, it didn't matter. The stake had done its job, and was back into the hand of the hunter.

“What do you want?! Kill me, and let us be done with it!”

But the monster that had once been his lover only watched Damon as he said that.

“Why? You are going to die anyway.”

“Then I don't know, go after her, hunt Rebekah, and Elijah too for all I care! But don't stay here, don't look at me like that, with his face, don't talk to me with his voice, and get his body the hell out of my sight!”

But the Original before him, the Original who had Ric's face, Ric's voice, Ric's body, the Original stayed there, and stared at him, as if wondering how much time it would take for him to die after Klaus' death.

“I can live with killing only one of them this evening. There are only two left. And even if they are good at hiding, I am a Falkenbach. I am good at tracking people down. Sooner or later, they'll die.”

There wasn't even the wrath the hunter had had before. There was nothing.

All that because of the damned ring!

And Esther, too, of course, damned bloody Original Witch, but she was dead, and he couldn't do anything about the fact he didn't have the possibility to take revenge, so he'd settle with complaining about the ring.

He should never had taken it when Katherine had told him about it, and that way, the hunter wouldn't have been able to put his feelings away. Sure, he'd have still hated them all, wished their deaths, acted for these deaths to become reality, but it would have been better than what was in the hunter's eyes right now.

Absolutely nothing.

Alaric had already looked at him strangely, when he looked at him like a Falkenbach, all emotions veiled, and once, Damon had thought it creepy, because those eyes were the eyes of a dead man. But it had never lasted, it had only been for a few seconds, or if it had lasted longer, because his boyfriend had been hiding something for example, Ric's body language had told him what his eyes wouldn't. It didn't matter that it was a carefully controlled body language, it was still better than nothing. When Alaric kept something to himself, his eyes were entirely empty of all emotion, but he let his body act according to what he didn't want to hide.

There, there was absolutely nothing.

All because of one tiny magic ring made of amethyst, with the Falkenbach seal carved on it.

All because of that.

Damon's eyes lit up suddenly with a sickly gleam, and his face bore a new determination when he looked back at the hunter. He'd rather die by the Original's hand, with all his hatred and love for him reflected in Alaric's eyes, than agonize in front of a monster who felt nothing as he watched.

Damon launched himself at the hunter who wasn't expecting it at all. Nevertheless, the Original was also a Falkenbach, and he reacted in the blink of an eye, breaking one of the two arms that had just torn his shirt. But the older vampire was determined, and despite the pain, he kept pushing with his other hand, until the skin of the stomach broke and let his fingers in.

Blood dripped on his arm, and the hunter seized the hand that had started rummaging his guts.

He was strong, way too strong, and even if it must have hurt, such a wound could do no lasting damage to a vampire, let alone an Original. Even if it had, Damon doubted the hunter could feel anything, for he had the ring in his body, and the seals on his shoulder and on the amethyst must have been resonating like crazy, making a mess of his sense of touch and pain. Not that the hunter cared, since he wasn't humane anymore. At most, it was a bit inconvenient.

“What are you doing?”

The question mark was barely audible, because there was no tone, no emotion behind it. Not even frustration or mild interest. It was nothing more than a question to figure out what Damon was trying to do, because this wasn't something the hunter had expected. It wasn't something that could worry him either.

But if the hunter was way stronger than Damon would ever be, the older vampire was desperate.

“What are you doing?”

In a last attempt before his hand was taken out of the hunter's body, Damon's fingers found what they had been searching for. One single tug from the hunter, and the hand was out, with what it had seized.

The hunter's eyes became glassy for one instant, and then everything came back. A whirlpool of emotions, granted, not as many as it would have been if the hunter had been a regular guy, and not a cursed one, but still so many more than just a second before, a whirlpool of emotions appeared in the blue of those eyes. The hunter's face distorted into something that was between monstrous and wonderful, because there was so much anger, and yet, so much love, and most of all, because there was finally something after hours of nothingness.

“What have you done?!?”

Alaric's voice thundered, and Damon was so relieved to hear a tone in it that two tears escaped his lashes and rolled down to die in a battered smile.

“I've brought you back, my love.”

And he opened his hand, releasing a digusting substance that was mostly made of gastric fluids and blood. One shadow fell faster than the liquid, and when it hit the floor, it did it with a metalic tinkle.

A ray of artificial light fell on it, and as the blood flowed to the ground, the hunter saw a violet glint.

The hunter, with his emotions back, kicked Damon hard in the ribs, and the vampire got flung to the nearest wall. The disturbing sound of some of his bones breaking from the shock resonated in the room.

“Why do you always have to complicate everything, Damon?!? What can't you just let it happen! I can't stop myself from loving you, and yet I can't do anything else but kill you, or get you killed, eitherway, same thing, same result. You have to die, don't you understand that?! You deserve better than this dratted condition, and the only other alternative for you, for both of us, is eternal rest!!! We are dead, and so we shouldn't be here, walking, and yet we are. I have to end it, and make every vampire on this planet disappear, for we are abominations!”

The hunter glanced at the ring, but shook his head, clearly angered and exasperated. He let it there, and walked to the one he loved so much that killing him was so difficult, even if necessary.

“You wanted me to come back? Here I am, and I'll make sure you won't enjoy our last minutes together. You should die any time soon, now, but I can make you suffer as much as you condemned me to suffer when you decided we couldn't do it the easy way! You, Damon Salvatore, are going to wish you had never taken this ring out of my stomach!!!”

Then it started, kicks and punches so strong they shattered Damon's bones instantly, and with those, twisted limbs and ripped out teeth. The hunter only waited for it to heal the bare minimum before going at it again, and his face was as messed up with tears and winces as the older vampire's, though he was the one doing the beating.

But Damon regretted nothing, despite the pain, despite the suffering, because at least he could see emotions on Alaric's face, and that was all he asked for in his final hour.

Then it hit him, as surely as the hunter's heel landed on his stomach. He wasn't feeling any weaker than before Klaus' stabbing, considering the massive blood loss he was experiencing.

But before he could think anything of it, a punch hit him on the face, and it wasn't strong anymore.

Damon looked up, and saw Alaric stagger, and his legs give away. The older vampire reached for the Original, who fell in his arms, going grey, going venous, sputtering water, dying.

Dead.

Alaric's ghost watched, as his lover started crying over his corpse.

Then he closed his eyes, and disappeared.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah ah, I'm so evil...
> 
> To be continued, don't worry.
> 
> But I'd like it if you look for the hints to what will happen in the next part, "One world apart", I mean, aside from what happens in the fourth season and that I will use to a certain extent, as I did for seasons 2 and 3.  
> "One world apart" should begin some time in January. It will be shorter than part 1 and 2, like around 25 chapters, I think... Meanwhile, I might work on one or two oneshots.


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